Owl Power’s founder and CEO, James Peret, has developed and launched a product called Vegawatt, a fully automated cogeneration system for restaurants, designed to run on waste vegetable oil.
The device, which is about the size of consumer-size refrigerator, includes a turn-key waste vegetable oil (WVO) refinery that automatically transforms even the most used cooking oil into fuel that generates up to 25% of the electrical power a restaurant requires for lights and hot water.
This requires no fossil fuel for start up. The 5kW unit developed by the company is based on the amount of waste oil most restaurants produce in a week (50-80 gallons). A larger unit for supermarkets is being developed.
Rather than look for ways of increasing power generation by straining limited resources, it seems to make sense to have self-reliance built into small and large units. If even lighting requirements of hotels are taken off the grid, that would be a big load off. Add hospitals, schools, government buildings. So also, at individual home levels. This is similar to using recycled grey water for washing purposes and tap water for drinking and cooking.
The big question again: as long as cheap power is available from the grid, who would make such a move? As long as water is cheap, who will think of recycling water? Would it help to provide incentives? Real big ones? What do you say?
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