Eneco thermal-electric converter technology re-emerging

MicroPower Global of Texas has purchased the IP from the bankrupt Eneco, and has secured relationships with Texas State University to test and perfect the technology so it can be brought to market in order to harvest waste heat energy via a solid state chip. 

On Nov. 23, 2006, we first reported about Eneco, a development stage company that claims to have invented and patented a "solid state energy conversion/generation chip" that will convert heat directly into electricity or alternatively refrigerate down to -200 degrees Celsius when electricity is applied.  I was able to visit their lab near the University of Utah, and for a time we listed them in our Top 100 Clean Energy Technologies.

On Jan. 11, 2008, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

I recently received the following email from Tristan Lewinsohn; VP of Business Development for MicroPower Global with an update about this technology.

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Hi Sterling,

You may remember writing about a company called Eneco a few years ago, and conducting an interview with Lew Brown following a visit to Eneco’s lab in Utah. You may also recall that the company then fell into financial difficulties and ended up going into bankruptcy.

If so, I thought you might be interested to know that I’m part of a group of former Eneco investors who got together and purchased the IP, and we have set up a new company to commercialize the technology, called MicroPower Global.

To achieve this, we needed money, the right people and the right facilities. We’ve recently had an initial close on a $4.7m raise (to which we hope to add $2.5m in the coming weeks), built a strong team with the right mix of technical and commercial nous (mainly ex-Motorola), and signed a deal with Texas State University which gives us access to equipment unrivalled in North America, world-class expertise and an 11-strong full-time team dedicated to achieving our goals - see www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JzV9kM-QXc. 

I think you’ll agree the facility is one or two notches up from the Eneco lab!

Our technical team spent much of last year verifying the Eneco data and putting together an in-depth plan of how to move forward. We’ve been working at Texas State since January and have already successfully created a barrier layer on lead telluride (the initial material of choice for the markets we plan to address) but, in all honesty, the technology has made little progress since 2006 as by then Eneco was living a hand to mouth existence, and did not have the necessary equipment to move forward (an MBE machine) so funding became the key focus until the eventual bankruptcy towards the end of 2007.

Depressing as that is, we now have everything in place to achieve some real progress. The aim is to produce the world’s first 15% efficient thermoelectric chip by the end of the summer which will mean we’re well on course to achieve our goal of a 20% prototype module by early 2011.

Bearing in mind Eneco’s experience, we’re reluctant to seek any publicity and make any bold claims until we have significant results to report but, given your knowledge of the background, I thought you might like to know the technology is certainly not dead and buried, and that we do hope to have something to shout about in the near future.

There’s obviously a fair amount of information on our website, but if you’d like to know any more at this stage, just let me know. 

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In reply to a question about whether we could publish this, Tristan wrote:

Would be delighted for you to share the news that the technology is back on track and being given a fair shot. Of course, we think we’ve got the right team and facility to make it happen, but we don’t want to really start making noise about what we can do until we have something in our hands to prove it.

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