Staying Active Never Looked So Sexy: A New Category of Renewable Energy
If you have hand-held mobile electronic devices and you roll out of bed each morning, there's something you can potentially use to start harnessing your body's kinetic energy and turning it into electric power.
Aaron LeMieux, has invented the nPower® PEG, which he spent 10 years developing. It's about the length of an ear of corn but much smaller in diameter, weighs less than 1 pound, and is now on the market for $150.
LeMieux started developing his idea into a real invention while he was still an engineering student at the University of Toledo. On a hiking trip, he wished that he had a portable tool for recharging his hand -held electronic devices and, as the saying goes, the rest is history, though his company is still growing and he plans to develop more devices that produce clean, alternative and renewable energy.
LeMieux owns his Cleveland-based company, Tremont Electric, and currently the company has 9 employees, most of whom work out of a storefront factory in Cleveland's Tremont neighborhood.
One of the many advantages of such an invention is that it generates green jobs for the local economy. The company started with just LeMieux; now it has 9 employees. In time, as the product faces greater demand, the company will grow and it will hire more people.
Moreover, the patented technology just might encourage other motivated inventors in other states and in other countries to come up with their own designs, functionality, and application. The possibilities are limited only by our imagination.
The initial investment of $135,000 came from LeMieux and his family. This seed money helped him get a bank loan which, in turn, gave him the time to plan the product and obtain a patent.
For two and a half years, he received no pay, and he was the only person working to develop the invention into a practical and marketable device.
The ingenious invention comes in a pouch that holds the nPower® PEG which can be fastened to an equipment vest. Battery packs are contained with it and charged while the person is moving (walking, hiking, running, cycling, mountain biking, step-aerobics, belly dancing, etc.). As the user moves, a generator slides up and down on springs inside a titanium casing, producing and storing electricity.
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