Indonesia: Start-up Ampd Energy hopes to oust noisy, dirty diesel backup generators

Indonesia: Start-up Ampd Energy hopes to oust noisy, dirty diesel backup
generators

Hong Kong start-up Ampd Energy hopes to make diesel generators obsolete with
its battery-powered energy storage system, especially in countries like
Indonesia and India which often suffer power failures.

The Ampd Silo, which runs on lithium-ion batteries and has a 17 kilowatt
hour capacity, could provide four hours of uninterrupted power to a
three-bedroom house or a 10-person office, Ampd Energy chief executive
Brandon Ng said.

The start-up, which joined Hong Kong Science and Technology Park's Incu-Tech
incubation programme in 2015, hopes to replace diesel generators as back-up
power sources. Once the Ampd Silo is hooked up to a building, it can provide
uninterrupted power the moment it detects a break in the usual electricity
supply, with no transition time in-between.

"You won't even know that there is a blackout unless you look outside and
see that everyone has lost power," Ng said.

The Ampd Silo also required little to no maintenance, the company said,
compared with diesel generators that needed to be maintained regularly to
ensure the engine was kept lubricated and the battery would not die.

Brunei-born Ng, who started Ampd Energy with co-founder Luca Valente, said
the inspiration for using lithium-ion batteries as a source of backup power
came from their previous start-up, ElectroForce Motors, which made
high-performance electric motorcycles.

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"We were having a dinner meeting with a partner in Sumatra and the power cut
out," Ng said. "We thought that it would be great if we could take the
batteries from our motorcycles to power the building. That's when we had our
light-bulb moment - during a blackout."

"We realised that there are a ton of people around the world that don't have
steady electricity, and that was the problem we set out to address," Ng
said.

The Ampd Silo works for buildings in the same way that a powerbank works for
mobile phones - electricity can be stored and then used whenever required.
It also did not pollute the environment by emitting fumes, Ng added.

Ampd is targeting the Southeast Asian market as well as India, as these
regions are prone to frequent blackouts. Ampd Energy hopes to find its
customers in mission-critical facilities such as hospitals, data centres and
airports that require absolute uninterrupted power supply.

A report released last year by PricewaterhouseCoopers estimated that
blackouts cost the Indonesian manufacturing sector about US$415 million
every year.

"The Ampd Silo would also be very helpful in industries that deal with the
pasteurisation process, for example. If there is even a one-second cut in
power, anything in that process has to be thrown out," Ng said.

Ng said the Ampd Silo, which starts from US$8,800 per unit, is only slightly
more expensive than a typical diesel generator in Indonesia which usually
cost more than US$7,000. But he emphasised that the Ampd Silo was far more
reliable than a diesel generator since it required almost no maintenance,
and represented a cleaner alternative for the environment compared with
traditional generators.

"When you get the Ampd Silo, what you pay for is the cost of the electricity
to charge it," Ng said, adding that the company was working on an update
that let owners configure the Ampd Silo to charge itself only when the cost
of electricity was at its lowest, during non-peak hours.

With future software updates, Ampd Silo owners could even make money by
buying and selling clean energy to the electricity grid, the start-up said.

Currently, trials for the Ampd Silo were under way with an Indonesian
hospital group and a telecommunications company, Ng said. In Hong Kong, Ampd
Energy was also testing the Ampd Silo in a company's server room.

Ampd Energy is currently working with Indonesian distributor Praptadaya
Sumber Perkasa and Hong Kong partner Yau Lee Construction Company to bring
the Ampd Silo to the respective markets. The start-up will start selling
Ampd Silo units next month and targets deliveries in April this year.

So far, Ampd Energy has raised US$3.7 million in seed funding, making it one
of the largest seed rounds for a Hong Kong start-up.

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Link to Original Article:
http://www.scmp.com/tech/article/2059602/start-ampd-energy-hopes-oust-noisy-
dirty-diesel-backup-generators

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John Diecker
APT Consulting Group Co., Ltd.

www.aptthailand.com