Inspirit Energy Holdings Plc (LON:INSP) Chief Executive Officer John Gunn caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss the successful completion of internal testing for their Inspirit charger, the significance of this and the next steps for the company
Q1: Some exciting news out today with regards to the successful completion of internal testing on the Inspirit charger. First off, can you tell me what the Inspirit charger is?
A1: We produced today a boiler, not too dissimilar to a boiler that you have in your own home, and the huge advantage of the inspirit charger. It is a boiler that not only meets your hot water demands for baths, showers and your central heating but it also produces, at the same time, electricity and we’ve developed 2 appliances; one that produces 15 kilowatts of thermal and 2 kilowatts of electrical and one that produces 15 kilowatts of thermal and 3 kilowatts of electrical. In a way, it’s a small home power plant but I would add that aside from the domestic market, Inspirit have actually targeted initially the commercial market.
Q2: Can you explain the significance of this testing?
A2: Yes, of course. Appliances such as ours go through many prototypes, today we have concluded our development and the production of our commercial appliance. When I talk about commercial I’m not talking about the commercial market, I’m talking about this is an appliance which is fit for purpose, that can go into the marketplace and be sold to the consumer, so it’s a product where we have developed it in such a way that it can be mass manufactured. The significance of the testing is obviously is once the development has been done, and there are many aspects of that, the unit is then assembled in its complete form and then it has to go through a series of rigorous tests to demonstrate that actually it is, the term I’ve used quite frequently today, ‘fit for purpose’, it can then be sold to the consumer and they can be confident of its reliability, its durability and its performance.
Q3: Now you’ve agreed with Enertek International that the appliance will be delivered to them in January for independent third party testing, why is that?
A3: Any appliance that goes into your home today, and it’s the same for any home or any commercial installation in the UK, if it runs on gas it has to be certified to be gas safe, we hear that all the time when your boiler engineer comes round to your house, he’s gas safe. So obviously we’re not going to put appliances into people’s homes that have not been tested for their safety, now I can assure our shareholders and our customers that our appliance is very safe and it will go through this procedure at the facility in Enertek. This procedure will take approximately 6 weeks to complete and at the end of that period, the appliance will be given its certification as gas safe which it can then be installed into what we call ‘a real environment’ so it’ll be used, it’s not going to be, even though it’s a sort of trial appliance as we mentioned, it’s going into a real world environment. So somebody will be taking out an existing boiler and putting this one in as its replacement and therefore it’s got to stand up to the rigors of use and that’s what these trials are intended for. There is a further element to it, unlike wind and solar where the government has been withdrawing tariffs, withdrawing the incentive, the government has actually continued to support our technology and obviously as people are aware of today, there are these schemes which the government have created called a feed-in tariff where the government pays you for producing electricity, even electricity that you consume. So the Inspirit charger produces, for the domestic market, 2 kilowatts of electricity which can not only be consumed by the consumer, and therefore saving them the cost of their electricity, but also the government will support that as well by adding a tariff to that and that tariff is approximately 13p a kilowatt hour which is quite significant. So obviously to qualify for this scheme, there’s a 2nd test that has to be carried out which are called MCS certification and we will embark upon that. That won’t delay our trial because once the unit has got its gas safe certification effectively, it will then go into the test facility, the real world test facilities, and thereafter units will be sent to additional testing to qualify for the feed-in tariff. It’s an incentive but it’s not in terms of long-term strategy, obviously we are very confident that our unit will provide the consumer with considerable savings which will give it one of the shortest paybacks in our industry.
Q4: Ok, so how long with the field trial run for?
A4: Well they’re real world so once they go in, it’s the sort of thing you know if you like it, you can keep it and it’s literally as simple as that. Once the new machine produces the data, the end customer is satisfied with the data, it’s then up to that customer to determine in fact whether they want to purchase more units and we targeted trial partners that have got scale. So obviously we’ve approached companies that we know won’t be buying in ones and twos, maybe they buy several more than that and maybe in the future, leading into the hundreds. So that is the intention so the idea is to get it out into trial but at the same time, move forward with our strategy of going into production.
Q5: Once the field trials are complete, what are the next steps for Inspirit Energy?
A5: Well, whilst the field trials are going on, obviously Inspirit will be moving forward into a production phase, there’s an element of work that needs to be done with that, you’ll appreciate. We will be aligning ourselves with partners to manufacture our appliance on scale and then obviously, hopefully, overtime that scale will increase as the demand for our product increases and the end customer realises the significance of it and the potential that it has given its high electrical output, which is very significant in this changing world, where we see all the debate about climate change. Phenomenal agreements have being reached but at the same time if the British government could just look home, at a humble company based in Sheffield, they’ll realise that the technology we have has the potential to make a significant change, significant reductions in carbon, significant reduction in coal-fire/gas-fired power station output and less dependency on these out of date energy sources and looking for a clean technology that it sustainable.
Q6: Just jumping back then, I guess the next news investors should be looking out for should be in January to confirm delivery to Enertek?
A6: Yes, I mean you can’t just ring up Enertek and say ‘we’re going to be there tomorrow’, they’re a busy company and obviously we’ve had to try and find a diary date to fit in with theirs. So obviously the unit will be sent up there at that time, dates have been agreed, a couple of final touches but nothing significant so a date has been agreed, the unit will be sent there and the testing will continue. At the same time, we’re assembling our trial appliances now in our Sheffield facility, along with our engineering partners, and they’ll form part of our units that we’ll be using for our trial partners. So obviously we’ll be giving our shareholders feedback on the testing, though I would ask them not to be concerned and I would say that shortly after that, we’ll be announcing some of our trial partners who obviously will be doing the installations with. Thereafter, the next steps for us are really to, as I said in the RNS in my comment at the end, you know obviously the challenges we face now we’re looking forward to and they represent taking this product through to commercialisation.
