Dream, Learning, Knowledge, Action

Founded in 2006, General Compression was launched with a vision of creating Dispatchable Wind to integrate low-cost bulk storage with wind farms to eliminate the issues of intermittent renewable power generation. General Compression has made patent-pending advancements in the fields of isothermal compression and expansion to provide utility-scale storage for both renewable and conventional electricity sources.
General Compression (GC) is a project development company enabled by proprietary technology. Dispatchable Wind is firm, cost-competitive energy available on demand for any curve and time scale. Their projects are designed to set clean, domestic wind power on a path to become the dominant electric power generation source in the United States and abroad.

To be cost-effective for utility-scale operations, efficiency is crucial. In 2009 GC landed a $750,000 grant from the U.S. Energy Dept., enabling the company to test a critical refinement of their air- compression technology. “That [money] gave us a significant boost, going from ‘this looks like it is working,’ to ‘this is definitely working and it’s bankable,’” says Ingersoll, now chief executive officer and co-founder of the 40-employee General Compression in Newton, Mass.

This is just the kind of creative transformational-energy research the DOE is trying to support through its Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). First funded in 2009, the 21-employee agency is a critical part of the Obama Administration’s response to the specter of a tripling in global energy demand by 2025. Explicitly modeled on the Pentagon’s counterpart, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), ARPA-E functions as a funding agency that supports the most promising breakthrough-research proposals coming out of universities, corporations, and nonprofits, as well as from its network of 17 national labs. The grants target early stage technology, nurturing proof-of-concept units into pilot stages and later, into demonstration projects backed by venture capital.

General Compression may not need further help from Uncle Sam. In early June the company closed a $54.5 million round led by Northwater Capital Management in Toronto. That’s helping to launch a pilot project in Texas undertaken with ConocoPhilipps (COP), which is also an investor. US Renewables Group, Duke Energy (DUK), and Serious Change are also partners. The pilot will start at 2MW, the output of the average wind turbine -- enough to power 200 homes at peak demand -- but should be able to go up to 1,000MW, the power of two conventional coal-fired power plants, says Ingersoll.