Static Electricity Seen as Clean, Cheap Source of Energy

LAWRENCE, Mass.  In this former mill town, abandoned factories are a magnet for entrepreneurs looking for cheap space in which to build their dreams.

“We had a spreadsheet software start-up in here for awhile, they went on to make millions,” says Asa Hutchinson, a descendant of a nineteenth 19th robber baron who is now reduced to renting out his great-great grandfather’s somewhat dilapidated brick building.  “Then there was a wind farmer guy, but he couldn’t make a go of it even when he opened up all the windows to get a cross-breeze.”

Cat-based static generator.

Hutchinson doesn’t know what to think of the prospects of his newest tenant, Static Jolt, whose workers shuffle across carpeted floors above his office at all hours of the day and night, but he’s suspending judgment as long as they continue to pay their rent on time.  “They tell me they got an A, a B, and a C round of financing already,” he says, scratching his head.  “As long as their checks clear, I don’t care if they’re giving rumba lessons up there.”

Static Jolt is a “clean energy” company, but one whose power is produced not by wind, water or sun, the most common elements seen as the fuels of both the future and the past, but static electricity, the annoying sparks produced by an imbalance of electric charges within or on the surface of a material.

Beta test in progress.

“Think of it,” says the company’s “Chief Imagination Officer,” Todd Werlick.  “No more oil spills, we reverse global warming, and you don’t have to buy gas to drive your car or heat your home.  It would be totally sick,” he adds as he shoots soft, green “nerf” bullets at his co-founders.

Static electricity peaks during winter, the very time when it is needed most, according to lead investor Tom Primacki of Pillage Partners, a venture capital firm.  “Think of all those times you got hot and tried to take off an ugly sweater at a Christmas party and your hair was sticking out straight for the rest of the night,” he muses as he looks out the window at the Merrimack River below, dreaming of the fortune he stands to make if Static Jolt goes public.  “If we could harness that power we could tell all those sand jockeys in the Middle East to blow it out their camel’s ass.”

Energy self-sufficient.

The low-cost of static electricity is a function not just of its ubiquity in nature, but also of cheap labor, notes Werlick.  “We’re only required to pay the minimum wage to humans,” he notes approvingly as he surveys a large open space outfitted to hold up to 75 cats, which are known to be prolific generators of static electricity.  “Yes, the place will smell like the world’s largest kitty box, but no sacrifice is too great in the pursuit of money.”