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Media Outlet: Reno Gazette-Journal
Date: May 30, 2008
'Green Machine' gets trial in Texas
A small Carson City company has delivered the first of what it believes is the answer to turning residual heat that otherwise goes to waste into electricity.
ElectraTherm Inc.'s "Green Machine" is operating at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, using heat from the campus's heating and air-conditioning sources to generate 50 kilowatts hours of electricity, enough to power 40 homes.
While it's a demonstration project, it marks the company's entry into production of the commercial device at its manufacturing site at Mound House, east of Carson City.
The potential global market, according to Richard Langson, ElectraTherm co-founder and CEO, is in the billions of dollars.
"There's a revolution in energy across the world," he said. "This is going to change our country."
For the moment, though, his sights are on the SMU campus. The Green Machine, about 6 feet tall, 8 feet long and 4 feet wide, sits next to the campus boiler and chiller and connects, via pipes, to their residual hot water.
The water is fed into the Green Machine where the heat generates electricity that's sent back into the campus power grid.
Langson said the device costs $80,000, but in the case of SMU, an estimated savings of $45,000 a year on its electricity bill would mean a return on investment of about two years.
He said the world's growing need for energy efficiency and recycling will create a demand that he hopes will grow his work force from 20 now to 200 in the next few years.
"My vision is to make it totally scalable to homes," Langson said, but added, "We're a small company. We have to look at the low-hanging fruit. Down the line, we'll go after different markets."
"There's billions in business all over the world. We're at the right place at the right time."
http://www.electratherm.com/
 to ElectraTherm's Newsroom
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