Core Innovation
Etalim Inc. is developing new and groundbreaking technology that converts any fuel or heat source to electricity, with extraordinary efficiency and simplicity. The Etalim TEG device is elegant, straightforward to manufacture, and inexpensive. Etalim's unique TEG platform has several addressable markets, such as utility-scale solar power, cogeneration/CHP, and auxiliary/rural/telecom power generation. Etalim plans to manufacture and sell TEG devices to system OEMs within our target markets.
The Etalim TEG can achieve an extraordinary set of performance breakthroughs:
- Very high efficiency - almost twice the efficiency other small engines
- Operation from any available heat source or fuel
- Zero mechanical friction or wear
- Zero maintenance over an operating life of many decades
- Very low cost - simple architecture using standard materials and production processes
Micro-CHP Application
Micro Combined Heat and Power systems are essentially a home heating furnace or boiler that produces electricity in addition to heat. Conventional grid electricity generation is highly inefficient, with as little as 35% of the energy in the fuel burned in the power plant becoming electricity in the home. The rest of the energy is wasted as heat in the power station, with a small amount lost in transmission across the grid. Micro-CHP systems use natural gas (or other fuels) to generate electricity at the point of demand, with very high efficiency. This is possible because waste heat from electricity generation is captured and used within the home. Micro-CHP offers homeowners several hundred dollars in energy bill savings per year, with approximately five-year payback of equipment cost. Utilities and governments are strongly advocating micro-CHP because it can increase overall power generation capacity without expensive capital equipment and transmission investment, while reducing the carbon footprint of an average home by 1 tonne per year or more.
The micro-CHP market is young, with first-generation products becoming available in 2009 and 2010. Europe and Asia are the main markets, due to the large spread between retail electricity and gas prices and the prevalence of hydronic boilers (technically simpler for micro-CHP than forced-air furnaces in North America). Every major home heating manufacturer in Europe is now pursuing micro-CHP. There are very strong regulatory incentives in place for micro-CHP, particularly in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Japan. The micro-CHP system market is expected to be worth $1 billion by 2014, and to ultimately capture 30-40% of the $11 billion annual market for home heating boilers.
Etalim plans to produce and sell the TEG engine to established OEM boiler manufacturers who will design and market a complete micro-CHP product around the TEG. Current micro-CHP products use Internal-Combustion, Rankine or Stirling engines for electricity generation. While these engines are somewhat mature, they are relatively expensive and inefficient at electricity production. Future micro-CHP designs envision fuel cells as the prime mover. Fuel cells are efficient, but are also very expensive and complex at the system level. The Etalim TEG offers the high efficiency of a fuel cell, with the simplicity and reliability of a Stirling engine - at lower cost than either.
Solar Power Application
The Etalim TEG is well suited to utility-scale solar power generation. An Etalim-based solar power system will be comprised of a solar concentrating dish, 3m in diameter, that tracks the sun and concentrates sunlight onto our proprietary TEG. A 10 MW power plant based on the Etalim dish/TEG system would consist of an array of dishes 60 wide and 60 deep.
5000 GW of new electric generation capacity will be required worldwide over the next 20 years, at a cost of $4.2 trillion. Independent estimates of the Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) market, all of which is addressable by Etalim, suggest $300 Billion in solar power generation investment through 2030. Twenty-nine American states, India, China and the EU are all drafting renewable energy directives, typically requiring 20% of total electricity to come from renewable sources, such as solar, by 2020.
Etalim plans to provide second-generation TEG engines to developers and integrators of renewable power projects. The Etalim innovation provides the lowest cost of generated electricity and the availability of solar energy is well matched to peak electrical demand. From our analysis of expected future system costs using uniform assumptions for both alternative technologies and for Etalim, we expect to be able to dominate based on a cost of generation that is lower than even coal-fired generation. The Etalim cost advantage will lead to an even larger profit advantage.
