By REID TUCKER
It’s been a while since the Herald heard from Walter Owens, the man behind a motor system that harnesses free static electricity, but that doesn’t mean the Florala inventor has been idle.
Owens, 92, who first unveiled his machine, an electric motor unit that ingeniously converts static electricity into a practically unlimited source of DC power, in these pages back in 2009, has recently taken major steps toward ensuring his revolutionary invention goes into production sooner rather than later. It’s been a mission almost three decades in the doing.
First, Owens moved the main seat of his operations from his Florala worskshed to the facilities of TPR Systems, Inc., a Milton-based firm that manufactures turbine blades and stators for electrical generator systems and has extensive fabrication shop services. It was there that Owens, a retired engineer with the U.S. Air Force, met TPR Systems Chief Operations Manager Chuck Pyritz, himself a longtime engineer with decades of experience working for such industry leaders as Westinghouse Electric Company.
The combined know-how of Owens, who spent roughly 10 years hammering out the fine details on his static electricity motor, and TPR’s staff – especially Pyritz, to whom Owens gave half ownership and effective control of his nascent motor company – was a perfect fit.
“I spent years and years trying to get this machine off the ground and on the market, but I never quite got there,” Owens said. “Well, now we’re very close to putting it in production. Chuck knows how to build more of [the machines] and he has the facilities at his disposal to do it.”
The next big hurdle Owens had to overcome was getting a letter of certification from an engineer, a task which, given the spectacular claims he makes about his static electricity motor (specifically its ability to basically run forever), has been more difficult than he initially imagined. However, Owens said an engineering professor from Auburn University’s Samuel Ginn College of Engineering would be paying him a visit within the next few weeks, ready to sign off on his invention. After that it’s just a matter of putting what could be one of the century’s greatest scientific breakthroughs into production.
To that end, Owens said he’d already begun looking into purchasing a 24,000 square-foot factory in Florala and converting the facility into his new manufacturing hub once the static electricity motor has been certified. Owens said 50 people could be put to work almost immediately, with as many as 1,000 jobs becoming available as production ramps up.
The motor unit itself has gone through many different stages of development since Owens first conceived of such a thing all those years ago. The unit was as big as a washing machine in 2011, but refinements in the manufacturing process have seen the motor system shrink substantially to a rectangular box about the length and width of an average coffee table and 3 feet high. The technology behind the unit is also scalable, with the only limit being the size of the application, Owens said, as the apparatus collects free static electricity, a source so abundant it makes the operation of the motor practically perpetual regardless of its size.
“This machine can power anything, and I mean anything,” he said. “It can work with anything from a car to an airplane all the way up to an aircraft carrier.”
Owens estimates that the cost of the coffee table-sized unit (it could easily power a house, once the electric cycle is started by two standard 12-volt automotive batteries he said) would be roughly $25,000 at the start of mass production, with the idea being to finance ownership of the device. Replacement parts are all but unnecessary, with the specialized carbon brushes used in the motor predicted to last 25 years at least. Accessories attached to the motor would need regular maintenance and eventual replacement, but the power unit itself will last indefinitely, making it a desirable and practical alternative to more traditional options for homeowners around the world, Owens said.
“Everyone around the world is crying out for electric power and this machine can give that to them in abundance,” he said. “The word has spread on the internet, and I’ve received inquiries from Russia, New Zealand, England, Canada – you name it. People out there are definitely interested in my machine. At last, it’s just a matter of time before we can start building them.”
