MIT spin-off develops fridge for rural India

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology spin-off has raised funding to produce a solar-powered fridge for rural India.

Cambridge, Mass.-based Promethean Power Systems secured angel funding from the Quercus Trust of California, a private trust based in Newport Beach.

The new capital is expected to let Promethean Power Systems build a prototype to test in India in 2009.The country's fragile electric grid is creating strong opportunities for companies able to generate local power through solar or fuel cell technology (see
Plug Power tests fuel cells in India and American Superconductor moves into Indian market).

The company estimates that the fridge costs 66 percent less to operate because of the ability to remotely monitor and diagnose problems, as well as the need for fewer fossil fuels.

See a rendering of the prototype here>>

The standalone device is cooled by a hybrid compressor that runs off a diesel generator and three-to-five 180-watt solar panels. The refrigerator uses thermoelectric cooling instead of Freon and can reduce the dependence on diesel generators, the company said.

Thermoelectric cooling is based on the Peltier effect, in which a current passes through a circuit of two dissimilar conductors, and results in a temperature change at the junction (see GMZ Energy gets thermoelectric). Promethean says the technology has the potential to displace vapor-compressor refrigeration but has low cooling efficiency, which has limited its use to small applications.

Newton, Mass.-based startup GMZ Energy is also working on thermoelectric nanotechnology to use waste heat to run refrigerators and air conditioners.

Promethean said the food distribution network can use the device to consolidate pickups from farmers in remote areas because it’s designed to run off the electric grid or in places with intermittent grid access, the company said.

The Quercus portfolio includes cleantech investments such as San Carlos, Calif.-based algae biofuel maker LiveFuels; Ontario, Canada’s concentrated solar maker Cyrium Technologies; Houston-based hydrokinetic developer Hydro Green Energy; cleantech installer Standard Renewable Energy of Houston; thin-film photovoltaic cell maker Ascent Solar (Nasdaq:ASTI) of Littleton, Colo.; Charlotte, N.C.-based thin-film maker Sencera; New Castle, Penn.-based energy storage company Axion Power; plug-in hybrid developer Odyne of Hauppauge, N.Y.;   Arlington, Va,-based smart grid company GridPoint; Little Rock, Ark.-based ThermoEnergy, a municipal and industrial wastewater treatment and power generation technology company; and Irvine, Calif.-based cellulosic ethanol player BlueFire Ethanol.

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