With our world soon reaching the global heating tipping point, companies are scrambling to find a solution to this dire problem. However, two people may have found a way to generate electricity in a sustainable and scalable way.
In this discussion, host Daniel Litwin is joined by Iyad Baghdane and Alexis Herrera, the founders of A&I Power. Their energy company poses a transformation of the electrical industry, thanks to its reimagining of traditional power generation without the need for turbines and fossil fuels.
Here, they discussed the vision behind their technology, potential use cases and applications, as well as the challenges they foresee with integration at scale.
With the renewable energy sources that are available today, “reliability is a big question,” said Baghdane. “It’s not all about efficiency.”
He continued: “Conventional power is still the only true power source that we can rely on 24/7, 365 days a year, regardless of whether there’s enough sun or if there’s enough wind. The challenge with that is that with conventional we’re still relying on a dirty source, and it’s a source that, once you consume it, you can’t get it back.”
Herrera added, “What we discovered here is that our technology is more than 90% reliable and 90% efficient, so it’s as comparable to the reliability of a nuclear plant… Our technology is more applicable for the change we need today to fight climate change and air pollution.”
The partners went on to describe just how their patented power generation technology worked. Their secret? Getting rid of the combustion process used in traditional electrical generators, which typically use large amounts of fossil fuels.
“As long as you can provide that frequency, you don’t need the combustion,” revealed Baghdane. Eliminating that process means that you don’t need fossil fuels to generate electricity, and as a result, you’ll have zero gas emissions as well.
New Generator Technology Cuts Emissions, Embraces Sustainability
The search for more efficient methods of power generation at a time when climate change is top of mind continues to foster innovation. A U.S. company is among the latest to release a new technology, with development of a self-contained generator that doesn’t run on fossil fuels and works on the premise that once created, electricity can be produced continuously, in a method that’s both efficient and cost-effective.
A&I Power, headquartered in Miami Beach, Florida, has received a patent for its technology, which is a generator “with a static core, wrapped in electrical wire, to provide oscillations that, when transferred to the stators, will generate electricity.” Company executives said its current prototype “is able to provide sufficient output electricity to extract a portion in a feedback loop that continuously provides input. Therefore, an initial power source is necessary, but the power source can then be removed after the feedback loop is in place—thus allowing the generator to be efficient and portable.”
Iyad Baghdane, COO, and Alexis Herrera, CEO, of A&I Power, in an interview with POWER said the company’s “bread and butter is in power generation.” Baghdane, along with Alexis Herrera, the company’s CEO, has worked to develop a generator that can provide a sustainable supply of electricity with no emissions, that requires little maintenance, and can deliver cost savings versus traditional diesel- or gas-powered systems.
“We’re both in electrical engineering,” said Baghdane, adding that he and Herrera have “always looked at how we can optimize conventional power. The time has come to reimagine the way in which we create energy … we have envisioned a new way of thinking about power generation that is highly efficient and positions energy output in a way that centers the focus on the well-being of the climate while simultaneously lowering expenditures on the technology involved.”
Correcting ‘Inefficiencies’
Baghdane said he and Herrera focused on correcting what he called the “inefficiencies” of today’s power generation. “We went back to the basics, which is [Michael] Faraday and [James Clerk] Maxwell’s equations, it’s what we’ve been using since the time of Niloka Tesla,” Baghdane said, noting how electromagnetics defined several phenomena, including electricity and light.
“We realized it’s really the rotation,” Baghdane said. “We saw that there’s room to optimize this in a different way.”
“We did a lot of study on how could we use mechanical energy” to create electricity, said Herrera, noting A&I received a provisional patent in 2019 for the technology.
This chart provides information about the generator’s performance test set-up. Source: A&I Power
A&I Power’s invention relates to a method of generating electricity based on electromagnetic theory; the two executives said their technology is a new application based on Faraday and Maxwell’s equations. “While traditional systems suffer significant loss in energy due to the inefficient systems relying on mechanical components and combustion, A&I technology solves this problem by maximizing efficiency while perfectly obeying the laws of physics,” the company says in a technical overview.
The company’s technical paper says that, “When comparing the new technology to traditional electrical energy generation, it is observed that a higher yield from the new technology is achieved. That increase in efficiency is directly related to removing all inefficiencies and physical limitations in the traditional system (i.e. mechanical and combustion dependencies) and the energy loss associated with those older techniques.
“As an additional benefit, our patented technology presents a green, environmentally friendly approach to electrical energy generation which is easily integrated into traditional systems to obtain the target efficiency with minimal maintenance for continued optimal operation. After several trials, a prototype was constructed and proved that power could be generated without the need of any mechanical energy or alternative energy.”
This chart looks at performance test results for the generator. Source: A&I Power
“There was nothing out there that was a power generation technology that’s static,” Baghdane told POWER. “We’re not creating energy out of nothing, [and] it’s not a perpetual machine … we have an AC [alternating current] source, think of it like a battery that will excite the coil.” He said that after the provisional patent, he and Herrera said, “Let’s go and build a prototype. There are a lot of [ideas] out there, and they work on a theoretical but not a practical basis. We were able to prove the concept.”
No Rotating Equipment
The A&I generator negates the need for mechanical rotating equipment. Baghdane and Herrera said it allows for an 80% reduction in material, along with a 70% reduction in manufacturing time. They said that because the generator has no engine, and does not require fuel, it is safer, requires little maintenance, and is portable.
This is a view of performance test data, where the blue line represents the input current, and the green line represents the input voltage and frequency. Courtesy: A&I Power
This is another view of performance test data, where the blue line represents the output current, and the green line represents output voltage and frequency. Courtesy: A&I Power
They said the technology also “is highly scalable, easily integratable, and is applicable throughout a wide range of industries and products included, but not limited to the following: IoTs, drones, electric cars, larger vehicles, backup generators, large portable generators required for emergency use, and existing and new power plants.”
The executives listed several industries they said would benefit from the technology, including agriculture, telecommunications, and the medical field, particularly as a business where both remote and reliable sources of power are critical.
This is a view of the generator packing in a WC configuration. Courtesy: A&I Power
This is a view of the generator packing in a WOC configuration. Courtesy: A&I Power
“We have a roadmap,” said Baghdane. “Our plan is to build specific use cases, look for commercial partnerships, look for the market experts in every industry. They have the resources to build this out … our strategy is to really give this out to the world in terms of licensing and royalties. With this formula, you can customize any size you want. We can go and build a specific use case, say 10 kW. We can technically power a complete 5G tower, we can power homes and small buildings. You can disconnect from the grid, you can have this running non-stop, for powering your whole house.”
The company thinks the technology can prove itself quickly, particularly because of its lifecycle and cost-savings compared to traditional generators.
“The copper lifetime is your limitation,” said Baghdane, referring to the stator copper coil. He said that lifetime is “basically 100 years, with over 90% efficiency. The fact that you’ve eliminated the mechanical rotation, you’ve eliminated fossil fuels and emissions, reduced CAPEX and OPEX and maintenance … and the scalability is 100% applicable. We just eliminated the dependency on moving parts. We have the simplicity of set-up, and application to existing use cases.”
—Darrell Proctor is associate editor for POWER (@POWERmagazine). To learn more about A&I Power’s technology, contact the company.
A&I Power Launches Revolutionary Sustainable Power Generator
MIAMI BEACH, Fla., Nov. 19, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — A&I Power, a company dedicated to developing sustainable innovations to help combat today’s climate issues in power generation, today announced the launch of their revolutionary technology which offers a highly efficient method of electrical production.
A&I Power’s patented generator doesn’t require fossil fuels, is self-contained, and doesn’t have moving parts, and, as a result, is more efficient than traditional power generation technologies. The results include:
Zero investment on mechanical rotating equipment
Zero dependency on fossil fuels
Zero gas emission
Low maintenance
High product safety
High yield
80% reduction in material
70% reduction in manufacturing time
Portability: No engine or additional fuel required
This efficient, sustainable energy resource would lower the capital expenses (CAPEX) and operating expenses (OPEX) of traditional technologies and reduce the carbon output.
The basics of electromagnetics were defined by Michael Faraday in the early 19th century. Since then, not much has changed in the way power is generated, and the climate is increasingly paying the price. A&I Power Group’s founders, holding decades of experience in power generation, have sought out to find a more cost effective, efficient, and environmentally sound way to generate energy.
The result is a US granted patent that describes a generator with a static core, wrapped in electrical wire, to provide oscillations that, when transferred to the stators, will generate electricity. The prototype is able to provide sufficient output electricity to extract a portion in a feedback loop that continuously provides input. Therefore, an initial power source is necessary, but the power source can then be removed after the feedback loop is in place — thus allowing the generator to be efficient and portable.
“The time has come to reimagine the way in which we create energy,” said Alexis Herrera, Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder. “At A&I Power, we have envisioned a new way of thinking about power generation that is highly efficient and positions energy output in a way that centers the focus on the wellbeing of the climate while simultaneously lowering expenditures on the technology involved.”
The global energy market has called for a switch from nonrenewable fossil fuels to renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and tidal energy. These resources, however renewable, require large amounts of land and supplies to build and maintain which leads to high CAPEX and OPEX as well as a substantial carbon footprint. A&I’s patented generator negates the need for mechanical rotating equipment and allows for an 80% reduction in material as well as a 70% reduction in manufacturing time. With no engine or additional fuel required, A&I’s power generator is portable, requires low maintenance, and is incredibly safe.
A&I’s power generation technology is highly scalable due to the lack of constant energy input required, easily integratable, and is applicable throughout a wide range of industries and products included, but not limited to the following: IoTs, drones, electric cars, larger vehicles, backup generators, large portable generators required for emergency use, and existing and new power plants.
Other industries that would benefit from this patent include agriculture, which is seeing expansion in areas like vertical farming that requires massive amounts of power to sustain; telecommunications, which continues to expand globally and would benefit from an efficient and self-maintaining generator; and remote, lifesaving medical devices, such as dialysis machines, which are difficult to keep powered during natural disasters and outages.
About A&I Power Group
A&I Power Group leveraged decades of power generation experience to develop a new method of electrical production. By eliminating moving parts, including the complete turbine unit, A&I has created an efficient generator with lower CAPEX and OPEX. At the same time, it removes the need for input such as fossil fuels, helping power generation needs while addressing climate issues.
