A small energy company in Ann Arbor has come up with a new way to generate electricity from some very unusual fuels: waste gases from landfills, sewage treatment plants and even auto assembly plants.
A small energy company in Ann Arbor has come up with a new way to generate electricity from some very unusual fuels: waste gases from landfills, sewage treatment plants and even auto assembly plants.
By bringing 21st-Century ideas to a nearly 200-year-old technology, STM Power Inc. is suddenly gaining national attention. The current issue of Newsweek magazine even names STM one of America's top 10 eco-friendly companies doing work on renewable sources of energy.
That's pretty heady praise for a company with just 33 employees and just over 30 generating systems in use around the world.
But with energy prices soaring, experts say this is exactly the kind of innovative company Michigan needs to remake its struggling, auto-centric economy.
"We view STM as having a pretty significant technology in terms of helping to solve the needs we're experiencing in the energy markets, a chieving power generation that can rely on alternative fuels," said Jim Croce , chief executive officer of NextEnergy , a Detroit alternative energy corporation founded by the quasi-governmental Michigan Economic Development Corp. to advance Michigan as a leader in the study of renewable fuels.
"Clearly, the goal is to help position them to capture the market and offer alternatives and a diversity strategy for Michigan's economy."
Tucked away in a non descript office on an equally anonymous road in Washtenaw County, STM can complete the assembly of one of its PowerUnits , valued at about $65,000, in about 14 man-hours.
Consisting of an engine and generator, the units are about 9 feet long , 3 feet wide, 41/2 feet high and weigh 2 tons. Two of STM's 55-kilowatt generators can provide continuous power to the company's 60, 000-square-foot building.
STM has 32 units in the field, including China, Singapore and Britain. Officials also claim to have a backlog of orders for more.
Ford Motor Co. runs one of STM's generating systems on paint fumes from the automaker's Michigan Truck Plant in Wayne. STM also has two of its PowerUnits providing electricity for heating and cooling NextEnergy 's Microgrid Power Pavilion in Detroit.
The privately held company, which is jointly owned by a group of six venture capitalist firms, wouldn't release information about profits or revenue.
STM officials said they expect to achieve rapid growth in a largely fragmented industry over the next two years. In fact, the company plans on building about 2,000 power units a year by the end of 2007.
"As with any business, there is a lot of planning and strategizing that takes place, but there is also a huge amount of luck involved as well," said Dorrance Noonan Jr., president and chief executive officer of STM Power. "With the prices of energy going up, the level of awareness right now for alternative energy sources has never been more compelling in the history of this country."
STM estimates the annual landfill gas business to be about $1.5 billion. But with few companies using the methane gas that landfills give off to generate electricity, STM sees a largely untapped market.
"This is a pretty good technology at a pretty good time for us," Noonan said.
Initially financed by an $ 18-million research grant from General Motors Corp. in 1979, STM Power was originally organized as a research and development company that did experiments and demonstrations showcasing a variety of energy-related technologies, including engines based on the Stirling Cycle, a technology invented in 1816.
The Stirling is an external combustion engine, somewhat like a steam engine, that burns fuel to heat a liquid or gas in a sealed system -- hydrogen in the case of STM's PowerUnits. That heated hydrogen is then used to drive pistons that are in turn connected to an electrical generator.
In the last 20 years, advancements in science have made it possible to more fully realize the potential first hinted at with the original Stirling engine almost two centuries ago.
"We have solved several of the technical problems that have stood in the way in the past," said Ben Ziph , vice president for research and development. "Now, there are materials that are available over the last 20 years ... "
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Source: Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
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