By Sekhar Seshan. Consulting Editor, Business India

With a Royal Society award nomination, start-up company Emrod is all set to let Powerco, the second largest electricity distribution company in New Zealand, to test its technology.

“We have an abundance of clean hydro, solar and wind energy available around the world, but there are costly challenges that come with delivering that energy using traditional methods,” says serial tech entrepreneur Greg Kushnir, who was determined to find a technology to cut these costs. “Offshore wind farms, for example, require underwater cables which are expensive to install and maintain.” 

Kushnir, who wanted to come up with a solution to move all that clean energy around from where it is abundant to where it is needed in a cost-effective, eco-friendly way, was struck by how little has been done in the area of transmitting energy wirelessly over vast distances. 

“Generation and storage methods have progressed tremendously over the last century, but transmission has remained virtually unchanged since Edison, Siemens, and Westinghouse first introduced electric networks based on copper wires 150 years ago,” he says. “Everyone seems to be fixated on the notion that energy comes to consumers as electricity over copper wires. I knew there had to be a better way.”

He found it. He approached Callaghan Innovation, which backed Emrod with a research and development grant and seconded their lead scientist, Dr Ray Simpkin, to lead a feasibility study and work on the prototype – which received some government funding. What he came up with allows a significant reduction in infrastructure costs, which gives Emrod’s technology the capacity to support remote communities – such as in Africa and the Pacific Islands – by providing access to cheap, sustainable energy to power schools, hospitals, and economies.