A mutual love for the planet and aerospace inspired an innovative product proudly designed in Victoria and exported to the world. A lifetime of tinkering with everything that moves – from bikes to cars and planes – triggered the idea of using motion to power small electronic devices. The result was VolDrive™ Kinetic Energy Harvester – a device that converts motion into electricity to power smart sensors used in wind turbine blades, that provides a simple, long-life, maintenance-free supply of power which eliminates battery waste.
Winner of the Victorian Premier’s Design Awards Commendation for Circular and Sustainable Design – which recognises projects that embody excellence in design for sustainability and circularity – VolDrive is the brainchild of Onvol (French for ‘we fly’) cofounders, Molly Fullee and her husband Clinton Hopkins.
Theirs is a story of design creativity and entrepreneurship driven by 2 professionals who sought to make a difference in the world by focusing their energy on developing a sustainable and low carbon footprint technology that aims to revolutionise how we power smart electronic devices.
Realising the climate transition problem
Molly and Clinton were both commercial airline captains. The birth of their daughter Emily made them reassess their priorities. They wanted to make a life-long commitment to fighting environmental issues so their children could enjoy the same activities they did. With the push towards ‘electrification of everything,’ they realised that demand for rare earth minerals to supply battery manufacturers was immense.
While mining these components has a significantly detrimental impact on the environment, the disposal of batteries after their relatively short lifecycle is a compounding issue that receives little public awareness or scrutiny.
Necessity as the mother of invention
‘EVs are a positive step forward in reducing carbon emissions, but marketing EV’s as ‘zero emissions vehicles’ or having no carbon footprint is misleading,’ said Clinton.
‘If a vehicle is charged via a predominantly coal-powered grid, it’s actually a coal-powered car, so that isn’t solving the larger issue. The big challenge we need to overcome is transitioning our energy grids to renewables as soon as possible so that everything we plug into it will be greener,’ he added.
Another major problem that needs addressing is commercially-sustainable battery recycling and what happens to all the batteries we use every day to power portable equipment.
‘What if we didn’t use as many batteries in the first place and just powered portable devices directly from existing energy like motion or heat?’ asked Clinton. VolDrive answers those questions. It harvests energy right at the device source, powering the device indefinitely from latent kinetic energy. This reduces the need for devices to have power plugs, battery replacements or ever need recharging. Onvol’s first customer, Ping Services wanted an alternative power source – a lightweight, low-cost solution for powering industrial sensors inside of wind turbine blades. Molly and Clinton recognised that this was their opportunity to create something meaningful with wide-ranging global impact.
Aiding the transition to a renewable energy grid
For wind turbines to operate efficiently and avoid costly downtime, they require constant monitoring by internet of things (IOT) sensors. However, until now, powering those sensors has been expensive, resource-intensive and required traditional batteries that were heavy and needed to be frequently changed. Without monitoring, turbines are vulnerable to lightning strikes and damage, leading to thousands of damaged turbine blades being bulldozed into landfill each year.
‘Over 80 million batteries are used to power just IoT devices that are discarded every day around the world – roughly equating to 28 billion batteries going into landfill each year with only about 5% recycled’ mentioned Clinton.
‘Throwing out precious metals in the form of depleted batteries is a waste but these billions of batteries can also leak their toxic electrolyte chemicals, poisoning waterways and soils. We believed that there had to be a better, more sustainable way to power the growing number of smart devices. Environmental issues aside, recharging and replacing batteries isn’t a nice user experience or system design. That is how we began working in the climate tech space and the concept of VolDrive was born,’ he added.
The design process from the drawing board to the world’s largest wind farms
Clinton has always been fascinated with electronics and mechanical devices. With a solid foundation in mechatronics engineering and aerospace, Clinton set out to design the prototype himself, factoring in the similarities between aircraft propellers and wind turbines.
The first prototypes were designed in the family’s office where Clinton did the maths, modelling and computations to get the initial parts made. He built a custom centrifuge that would simulate the forces experienced in a wind turbine.
Testing indicated that the unit didn’t emit enough power so a further 18 months of prototype designing ensued. The once complex design was fine tuned to become more streamlined and simplified, removing some 50 movable parts to leave only one major movable assemblage and state-of-the-art power management electronics. Now a remarkable, lighter weight version, it is approximately 1000 times more powerful than prior kinetic energy harvesters on the market – with a 10 times smaller carbon footprint than battery alternatives. VolDrive is now used to power sensors in some of the world’s largest wind farms.
How VolDrive replaces the need for batteries
VolDrive harvests kinetic energy to power sensors in a way that is both environmentally and economically sustainable. Replacing the need for traditional battery-powered sensors, one VolDrive device can avoid the use of 4,800 batteries and 500 kgs of GHG emissions over a 10-year life span. The entire lifecycle of the device has been engineered to eradicate waste, reduce costs and maximise the amount of usable energy harvested.
As a reliable and independent power source for sensors, VolDrive installs in seconds and requires no servicing or maintenance for up to 10 years of operation. With no downtime required, it removes the need for dangerous manual inspections and battery replacement. This makes wind generation monitoring safer, more efficient and considerably more cost-effective – while providing real-time insights into the health of blades and detecting operational issues before they become irreparable thus saving turbine operators’ large amounts of money.
Circularity and extended lifecycle as hallmarks of great design
Measuring roughly 200mm in diameter and manufactured using hard plastic, VolDrive’s main components are now made in Asia while final assembly and testing in carried out at Onvol’s headquarters in the Melbourne suburb of Airport West – home to its in-house wind turbine simulator, affectionately known as ‘Moulin Rouge.’
From a design aesthetics and quality control point of view, Molly played a key role in ensuring that the VolDrive was well designed and easy to use for all the people who touch it along the product lifecycle.
‘Being so familiar with aircraft, we’ve always appreciated the importance of good design and the human factors of interacting with designs, because your life depends on it. In designing VolDrive, I would say this gave us a greater awareness that the design needed to consider all the touchpoints along its lifecycle’ commented Clinton.
VolDrive has a design life of 20 years, which is about the average lifespan of a turbine blade. Customers are incentivised to return VolDrive units for reconditioning after their initial 10 years of use, a process that entails only changing minor parts. This extends the warranty and life of the product to like-new condition. An initial 800+ units have already been deployed – mainly overseas, scattered across Europe, the United States and the Philippines.
Funding and support through international connections and local recognition
Molly has spent much of the last few years knocking on doors, networking, connecting with financial backers and spreading awareness of Onvol’s capabilities. Despite a multitude of ‘NOs’ here in Australia she persisted and eventually found capital investment through the US market.
That investment has allowed Onvol to grow from a grassroots team to an organisation of skillful professionals with a common goal of taking its technology to the next level. Its newly-assembled team also includes University of Melbourne graduate engineers and interns, with whom Molly and Clinton can share their expertise, possibly inspiring others to follow in their entrepreneurial footsteps.
‘Giving back and teaching others is one of the best benefits of the success we’ve enjoyed as a result of VolDrive. We’ve been able to take on interns, so they get hands-on experience in such an important growth sector,’ Molly said.
Future applications of cutting-edge technology
‘Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. How we scale it down and up, making it more powerful or less will determine the breadth of applications that VolDrive can be used for beyond its current one,’ said Molly.
While VolDrive is currently focused on powering wind turbine sensors, miniaturising the technology will extend its capabilities into an ever-increasing market of smart devices.
‘Ideally VolDrive will evolve to be a fusion of different power harvesting technologies for sectors that require IoT sensors for critical monitoring, such as containers, transport of produce/goods, freight and logistics, mining and many other heavy industries,’ remarked Clinton.
With this advanced technology and the passion of its team behind it, VolDrive is gaining significant interest both locally and overseas. Based on Onvol’s aspirations to utilise its technology for a wider range of environmentally-friendly applications, clearly not even the sky is the limit.
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