Energystics set to sail with wave-gen ‘Vibristor’ tech
With a new chief executive, a smaller prototype and a sharper focus, Energystics is ready to rock.
Literally.
Energystics’ patented and trademarked Vibristor technology, designed to harvest “vibrational energy” from surrounding environments, has many potential applications to choose from. But after years of development, the 2012 startup and longtime Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center (AERTC) client is on a commercialization course for the open sea, where the rocking of boats on the water has emerged as its No. 1 potential vertical.
Founder Reed Phillips and his R&D teams have certainly put the Vibristor through its paces, exploring several promising ideas for the vibrational energy generator: a shake-and-shine flashlight, a wave-powered navigational buoy, people-power personal-electronics chargers and more.
The tech works – walking and other simple motions generate enough harvestable kinetic energy to power a cell phone, for instance.
But before the 2012 startup and its clean-generation tech can reduce global carbon emissions and otherwise save the world, it needs to scale down – prototypes tend to be on the bulky side.
That was an issue with the first version of the boat-based generator, which was designed specifically to address dead batteries, a common problem for boaters.
The familiar scenario was mentioned to Phillips and friends more than once: Between voyages, boat batteries tend to run down, often requiring stranded vessels – including marina-anchored vessels resting out in the harbor – to be towed into port just to spark their engines.
And if those battery-powered bilge pumps fail – let’s just say “the damage can be severe,” according to Phillips. “Even total.”
Enter Energystics, which built a “trickle charge” device around the Vibristor tech, designed to harvest just enough wave energy from resting boats to keep those batteries juiced and ready.
Like other Vibristor applications, the device worked – but was too cumbersome to be of practical use, sending Phillps et al. back to the drawing board.
“We now have a prototype that’s half the size of the original,” the innovator says. “Hopefully, this is the one that will get on the boat.”
Helping it along will be Raphael Aquayo, a former professor of economics and technology entrepreneurism at the Stony Brook University College of Business and freshly minted Energystics CEO – a major score for the early-stage tech enterprise, according to its founder.
“He has a long history of being in the capital markets and a lot of expertise with that crowd,” Phillips notes. “He does a lot of the business-planning aspects and dealing with marketing issues.”
The company is also working closely with MBA students from the university, who are “focused on various projects for the company,” according to Phillips, including social media development and marketing research, all under Aquayo’s experienced guidance.
“This allows me to concentrate on just doing the technical work,” Phillips says.
That focus on research is paying off fast: The second boat-based prototype is “largely finished,” according to the Energystics founder, and should be ready for commercial deployment “hopefully within the next year.”
Phillips credited the facilities at the AERTC (“much lower business expenses in an incubator environment”) and the company’s previous membership in the Clean Energy Business Incubation Program (“very conducive to research”) as key contributors to Energystics’ steady rise toward commercial success.
“These are good places to exchange ideas with your fellow research colleagues,” he notes. “And in general, it’s a delightful place to work – a nice, quiet building that makes the equipment available when I need it.”
Those advantages loom large as Energystics, which ultimately aims to significantly reduce global carbon footprints, tweaks its first commercial products and builds a grassroots campaign to introduce them.
“We’re out in the field talking to marina owners, and two are already very enthusiastic about it,” Phillips says. “All told, the marketing research is very positive.
“We’re just about ready to go.”