Cash appeal to win heat deals
A COMPANY planning to build engines that convert waste heat to dispatchable electricity in Geelong is set to launch a crowd-funding offer to raise $600,000.
Capricorn Power’s crowdsourced equity funding offer will see 9 per cent of the company sold to new investors to help it complete its first commercial deals.
The start-up’s innovative Barton heat-to-energy engine, trialled at the Geelong crematorium last year, involves a closed-loop process that creates a portable, sustainable energy source with zero emissions.
Chief executive Mike Hodgkinson said Capricorn Power had been in serious discussions with a Sydney crematorium and a Melbourne business that makes furnaces about pioneering the new technology.
Mr Hodgkinson said raising $600,000 through crowd-funding would help close deals with the first couple of customers.
“We have been making really good progress on product development in the last 12 months,” Mr Hodgkinson said.
“We have probably halved the cost.”
Capricorn Power also has a proposal before Barwon Water.
Mr Hodgkinson said while not traditionally a popular option, drying and burning organic waste was often a better technical solution than biodigester treatments as it produced more energy and destroyed contaminants that other processes did not.
The creation of energy from gas furnaces at landfills had also been seen as a potential market for Capricorn Power with Australia combating a rubbish and recycling crisis brought on by China’s withdrawal from the market.
While there was “great opportunity” to harvest the embedded energy in waste, Mr Hodgkinson said current local and state government policy frameworks made it difficult to establish a commercial proposition.
“There aren’t very good pricing mechanisms at the moment,” Mr Hodgkinson said.
“The Government needs to get the pricing mechanism right, such as through increasing landfill levies.
“The other is EPA regulations. It takes too long and there’s too much uncertainty to make it interesting from a commercial perspective.”
Capricorn Power is committed to making the engines designed by former CSIRO scientist Noel Barton in Geelong.
It will release its crowdsourced equity funding offer through the Birchal platform in a few months.