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While serving in different parts of the world as a Navy SEAL, Doug Moorehead (MBA 2007) observed firsthand the human and material cost of energy inefficiency. In Iraq, where he spent hours guarding convoys that supplied fuel for generators, he learned that diesel costs $35 a gallon and that one US soldier is killed or wounded for every 24 fuel convoys, Wired.com reported (April 27, 2012).
Now retired from the military, Naval Academy and MIT grad Moorehead founded Earl Energy, based in Portsmouth, Virginia, which manufactures solar-paneled generators that require only minimal diesel to help recharge their batteries. In Iraq, “I’d see huge generators running all the time but powering very little,” Moorehead said. “We take it from running 24 hours down to 4 or 5 hours a day.” Marine Corps tests in the Mojave Desert of Earl Energy’s 18-kilowatt hybrid generators showed as much as a 90 percent reduction in fuel use. The Marines are now testing them at frontline command centers in Afghanistan, and if further trials go well, the generators’ military and civilian potential seems limitless.
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