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Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Owl Power picks Worcester manufacturer for Vegawatt systems
By Efrain Viscarolasaga
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Boylston-based Owl Power Co., the developer of the Vegawatt on-site waste vegetable oil co-generation system, has chosen Worcester-based Columbia Tech to manufacture the system for commercial deployment.
Owl Power’s Vegawatt system uses waste vegetable oil from restaurant deep fryers as a fuel source, capable of providing a given site with 10 to 25 percent of its electricity and hot water and reducing energy costs, according to company documents. The system also produces no liquid byproducts.
Owl Power was founded in 2008 by president and CEO James Peret, a former development engineer at Boston-based Insight Product Development LLC, and Chad Joshi, a former American Superconductor Corp. (Nasdaq: AMSC) engineer and founder of Lowell-based precision control device maker Energen Inc. According to an earlier interview with Peret, the Vegawatt costs about $400 per month to lease and can provide about $550 worth of power, paying for itself even before the cost and trouble of unloading waste oil is factored in.
In January, the company installed its first combined heat and power unit at Finz Seafood & Grill in Dedham.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Columbia Tech is a division of Coghlin Companies Inc., also based in Worcester.
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