Students bring innovative, renewable Off-Grid Box™ to United States, OSU
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
The innovative system arrived on campus Tuesday and will be on display in the parking
lot east of the Classroom Building through April 19 on the Stillwater campus. It will
be on display during OSU’s Earth Week (April 15-19) before it begins a campus tour
for numerous research projects.
The Off-Grid Box™ is an innovation of construction, design and living. It houses all
things necessary to run a home – water, gas, plumbing, electricity and heat – with
a focus on clean energy. When connected to a house, the Off-Grid Box™ creates a completely
self-sufficient secure structure, with no utility payments. It can be off-grid or
partially grid-tied to reduce the energy base load.
The project is in conjunction with OSU’s Wake Up and Dream project, an effort led
by the Institute for Creativity and Innovation in the Spears School of Business, encouraging
students, faculty and staff to advance to sustainability awareness, research and curriculum.
“You own your home, why not own your electricity, water and everything else you need
to be self-sufficient?” said Michael Solomon, president of SERC, a senior engineering
major. “The system is created to tie into what people would like to be, which is more
independent, more sustainable, and self-reliant, giving consumers more control of
their energy use, consumption and even production.”
SERC is hoping to expose thousands of people to the on-site generation of energy and
purified water while experiencing the challenges of coordinating interdisciplinary
projects.
The Off-Grid Box™ is designed, developed and patented by Italian company La Fabbrica
del Sole (La FdS), an energy management and installations company.
“The Off-Grid Box™ acts as a command and control center that harvests every available
energy resource on a given site with solar and thermal panels, can also tie it into
a geo-thermal exchange for heating and cooling, storage, water treatments,” said David
Grantham, La FdS North America International Business Development Officer based in
Oklahoma.
“This collaboration enables us to make a scientific and technological contribution
to the development of a green environment, utilizing natural resources on OSU’s campus,”
said Emiliano Cecchini, President of FdS, who made the trip to Stillwater to oversee
the installation of the first Off-Grid Box™ in North America.
La FdS NA is in communications with Oklahoma-based manufactures to produce the complete
Off-Grid Box™ in Oklahoma.
Agriculturally, the system is used to capture rainwater, measuring and processing
out any pollutants, like heavy metals, to make the water more available for irrigation
and farming, while being powered by solar energy.
The Off-Grid Box™ is a partnership between OSU and FdS, the Institute for Creativity
and Innovation, and the School of Entrepreneurship at the Spears School of Business.
SERC is an interdisciplinary collaboration between students majoring in business,
architecture, engineering, and arts and sciences, sponsored and advised by Melanie
Page, the director of the Institute for Creativity and Innovation, and Joshua Ramsey,
assistant professor in OSU’s chemical engineering department.
In the fall of 2014 Khaled Mansy in the School of Architecture plans to design a high-performance
cottage to connect to the Off-Grid Box™ when it is placed at its permanent home on
campus.
The Off-Grid Box™ is a $30,000 piece of equipment, co-invested by La FsD NA, in-kind
donations and student funds. The shipping was paid for by a collaborative effort of
fundraising of various departments spearheaded by the students.
Jane Talkington, Riata Fellow, housed in the Institute of Creativity and Innovation,
helped the students form the SERC club, and Nizam Najd is the club’s faculty adviser.
“Resiliency has been a hot topic in agriculture, planning, city design and disaster
relief for the last decade so we are now seeing products that can address those gaps
in the market,” said Talkington. “FdS NA was a corporate sponsor of our ecovillage
project since its inception in August and they have been instrumental in advancing
the conversations with our stakeholders about energy independence and onsite generation
of water and energy.”
For more information about SERC, contact Michael Solomon michael.solomon@okstate.edu.
For more information about the Off-Grid Box™ contact David Grantham at (405) 474-2225
or info@offgridbox.it or visit http://www.offgridbox.it/ENG/