I worked in the computer world for the last 15 years with numerous start-ups and small businesses. In the early dotcom days, I owned a portion of a multi-million dollar company. Unfortunately the dotcom bubble burst sinking our business. For years afterwards I continued numerous startup ventures with the goal of becoming wealthy. After my second child came along, I started rethinking what I was doing. Chasing after money was no longer fulfilling.

-Steve

Solving a worldwide problem

These days it's becoming harder and harder to deny the world is warming up. Every summer new heat records are broken across America. Humanity has to solve this problem before we make our planet unbearable to live in. We can either be scared of this daunting problem or we can try and do something about it. I choose to try and solve it.

Energy Efficiency isn't working

So far our solutions aren't working. Our buildings, cars, boats, trains and planes more energy efficient than ever. Yet each year we use more energy than the previous. Not that we shouldn't make the tools we use more efficient. We should! But this trend will likely continue, humans will use more energy tomorrow than we do today. The problem we must solve is where we get our energy from. As of 2011, the US produced 43% of our electric from burning coal. Our solar energy production is rising, but it's miniscule at ~0.1% of our utility scale electricity production. We need terrawatt level solar power.

Photovoltaics take too long to produce a profit

The cost of photovoltaics is coming down, but it still takes 15-20 years to pay for them. It's fantastic that they produce more money than they cost, but a 15-20 year payout is not a good financial investment. If on the other hand, solar electricity production were a good financial investment, more people and companies would invest in it. Typical utility grade solar installations cost $3.80-4.40 per watt. Coal on the other hand costs around $2 a watt, installed.

The obvious solution is to reduce the cost down below $2 per installed watt.

Zenman Energy - reducing the cost of solar power

So that's why I started Zenman Energy. Solar energy can cost less than it does. The first project we're working on is a solar steam engine. We need help funding the prototypes. Please, don't sit around being scared about climate change. Donate to Zenman Energy and help us further our research.

Is Zenman Energy a 501(c)3?

Yes, well... almost. We're still waiting on the IRS. We are a non-stock in the state of Virginia and have submitted all the appropriate paperwork for a 501(c)3, tax exempt status with the IRS. The final step in the process to become an official 501(c)3 with the IRS takes between 12 and 18 months to complete. We have been waiting since January 2012, we estimate it'll take another 5-6 months. The IRS has stated that once they have received all the paperwork we can begin operating as an non-profit. We are a non-profit with pending 501(c)3 status.

Why make Zenman a non-profit?

I feel that finding a solution to the world's energy problem is far more important than becoming wealthy. I hope to keep the focus on solving the world's large problems instead of focusing on making money. No individuals will receive dividends from the organization even when we begin constructing full scale power plants. We will reinvest every penny produced into more solar power plants and new energy research.

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About

A solar steam engine focuses sunlight onto a pipe of water. The water heats up and boils. The steam produced turns a steam engine while the sun is shining. The steam engine is connected to an electric motor which acts as a generator to feed electricity into the electric grid.

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Solar Steam Engine Electric Generator

Zenman Energy is attempting to create a low cost solar steam engine generator. This generator works by focusing a large surface area of sunlight onto a smaller area. The energy in the sunlight concentrates and produces vast quantities of heat. To increase the amount of energy, we increase the surface area of sunlight. We convert this heat into mechanical energy by boiling water and turning a steam engine. The steam engine will power an electric motor which ties directly into the power grid.

This is not a new concept. Large concentrated solar arrays have been in operation for decades. We hope to create a low cost, expandable solution that can create power plants of any size, from a few kilowatts up to many megawatts. Once we have a working prototype our entire focus will be directed at reducing the overall system cost and helping individuals and organizations construct their own. Our first attempt at reducing the expense of the overall system is using less expensive materials in the construction of these plants.

Some of the components for these power plants can be purchased locally from hardware stores. Other parts take a considerable amount of research to just find suppliers. Finally some of the components are custom made. We want to simplify this process so anyone in the world can easily get started making either a backyard solar power plant or buy acreage and build much larger power plants. If we mass produce the custom components, and mass purchase other parts we can dramatically reduce the cost and make medium to large scale solar plants achievable by a much larger population. Our end goal is to help make solar power plants that cost less than any other form of electricity generation.

Most importantly, we want to help YOU make a solar power plant that can power, not your house, but your entire neighborhood.

Is this for residential usage?

Technically it could be, but we're not going for aesthetics, you wouldn't want this on your rooftop as it would ruin the look of your home. Photovoltaic panels are works of art compared to how these will collectors look. We aim to fill fields with these solar collectors and potentially rooftops of big box stores (Home Depot, Walmart etc) where few people would even notice them.

There is a big benefit to putting these collectors on the rooftops of large buildings. They will absorb a rooftop's solar energy gain and reduce the need for air conditioners. Big box stores today have started painting their rooftops white in the hopes of reflecting that solar energy. When concentrated and harvested, that rooftop solar heat could easily power the entire building and potentially other buildings. There are engineering challenges we have to tackle before we're ready to put this on top of a big box store, but it is the direction we're going in.

Staying ON the grid, not off the grid

Many people that install photovoltaics attempt to get off the grid. This makes good sense in deep rural communities where running power transmission lines is cost prohibitive to only a small number of homes. We're not trying to remove the need for the grid. On the contrary, the modern electric grid is a marvel of human ingenuity. It is not the electric grid that is causing today's climate problems, it is the power sources at the end of the grid that burn fossil fuels. We want to use the grid to our advantage, we simply want to create newer, clean power sources that do not need dirty fossil fuels to operate.

The First Prototype

The first prototype will turn a 10 horsepower motor, roughly 7.3 kilowatts of energy. It will produce more than enough energy to offset a single, high energy usage, American home. In the grand scheme of things, this is tiny, but it is large enough to prove the design works; giving us a starting point to expand to larger sizes. Obviously solar power does not operate when the sun goes down in the evening. Think of this as an 'offset' instead of getting off the electric grid. 7 KW would provide enough energy to power 3-4 homes at any given time, but once the sun goes down it no longer produces energy. That's ok with us, as we can plug into the electric grid and the transmission lines will automatically route the electricity to where it is needed. An average American home uses roughly 29 KWH per day. Our goal is 5 hours of sunlight per day producing roughly 35 KWH per day. By using the grid, it doesn't matter to us which buildings actually use the electricity. But this prototype is enough to offset one high usage home.

The Second Prototype

The second prototype will turn a 100 horsepower motor, roughly 73 kilowatts of energy. In theory the design should be identical to the first prototype, with more collectors, a larger steam engine, larger motor, larger condensate well etc. We ultimately want to create a modular system that can run in parallel for the third prototype being the first operational power plant.

The Third Prototype...an operational power plant

The third prototype will be our first operational power plant. The goal is to produce a single megawatt plant. Large scale power plants are measured in megawatts. So it is imperative that we can demonstrate how to construct a megawatt scale plant. To replace a standard coal plant, we'll need 1000 of these! But, we have to start somewhere. We envision this design is little more than 7 of our 100 HP plants. Growing to this scale requires different grid connections than the smaller sized plants do. It will take additional research and work with electrical engineers to make this prototype a success.

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About

Zenman Energy will make information about constructing these solar power plants freely available to anyone. We hope those that attempt to build them will help us improve the design, reduce the cost and make solar power ubiquitous.

Freely available Solar Power Plant designs

It is not feasible for Zenman Energy to create enough plants to make a dent in world energy production. The world needs thousands as many solar power plants as our organization could ever hope to construct. Whether you're an individual or a multi-national corporation, we want to help YOU create solar power plants and eventually profit from doing so.

Depending on our level of donations, we also hope to sell hard to find and custom parts for these plants at our wholesale cost. We want to make it as easy for you to create a solar power plant as possible. This may sound strange, but if we can help YOU create a profitable solar power plant business, we have achieved the Zenman mission statement.

When will the designs be available?

We are still working on the first prototype. Once the first prototype is working we will release a set of construction plans to duplicate it. It will be a constant work in progress. We will need YOU to help us improve the design and documentation. That's how this works. As a community we'll make something that no one individual can produce.

At the moment, we're still in the fund raising phase help us get off the ground. We have a few parts of the first prototype working, but we need to raise a small amount from donations so we can finish the more expensive custom machined components. The sooner we have a working prototype, the sooner you can see our construction plans and build YOUR first prototype.

Patenting the designs?

Depending on what our attorneys recommend, we may elect to patent the initial designs under the non-profit's name, while still making them freely available to the public. Doing this would allow us to ensure we are not infringing on other patents and will keep others from stopping our progress. Open source hardware development is still very much in its infancy. If you're an attorney that specializes in open source licenses, PLEASE contact us!

Licensing and using Existing Products

Some of the parts for the Zenman Solar Steam Engine requires the use of existing products that are on the market. We don't expect or want to have to build every individual part. One of the goals for the design is to allow for interchanging parts. For example, we may recommend a specific brand of electric motor for the generator, but the design will provide the connection point for the motor and allow you to modify the design for another brand.

Getting involved in designing the prototypes

Are you an engineer? A hobbyist maker? We DEFINITELY need your help to get this project off the ground! Over the next few months we'll make a way for people around the world to contribute and test designs to improve the prototypes, remotely. But we need help from others too! Right now, the MOST critical thing we need is funding! We don't need much, but we need to custom machine certain parts which is not a cheap endeavor. You have a few spare dollars in your pocket, donate it to a good cause.

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About

Zenman Energy is a 501(c)3 non-profit research organization and we need your help to fund solar research and ultimately solar power plants.

Your donation is tax deductible, more importantly, it can help create the world you want to live in.

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Help Fund Solar Energy Research!

Humanity is facing a serious problem with how we produce energy. Every year we are digging ourselves into a deeper hole. Energy efficiency won't solve our problem, it is a band-aid on a life threatening wound. We are more efficient than ever, yet we use more energy today as we did yesterday and will continue to do so tomorrow. We need a viable replacement for coal, oil and nuclear power now! Photovoltaic panels are expensive. They are likely the solution in 25-50 years, but the world cannot wait that long. Zenman Energy will construct and operate medium scale solar steam power plants. Zenman Energy will freely release the construction designs to anyone that wants to build their own solar steam power plant of any size.

You can help Zenman Energy acheive its goals by donating today. Any size donation will help. Tell your friends about our project, write articles about our project, help us get these ideas off the ground.

Don't wait for someone else to solve the world's problems, let's help each other create the world we want to live in.

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