Greg Tropsa was running a firm that monetized low-quality natural gas on the
East Coast a few years ago when he came across a small company based in
Powell, Ohio, with an interesting, albeit untapped, piece of intellectual
property.
The company, Powell Energy Products, had developed and patented an
energy-storage device in the early 1990s that freezes tap water at night
off-peak for the electricity industry then uses the ice to make for less
expensive, more efficient air conditioning during the day.
Tropsa approached his neighbor in Fort Collins, Frank Ramirez, a former
investment banker then with a Front Range “inside-the-fence power company.”
They immediately sought to answer a burning question: “How strong is the
IP?” Ramirez’s answer: rock-solid patents that had been maintained for a
decade while the technology was mothballed.
“It’s almost as if we discovered a tomb of riches that hadn’t been pilfered
by tomb robbers,” he laughed. “It was almost too good to be true.”
Ramirez and Tropsa struck a licensing deal to commercialize the technology
via Ice Energy LLC, and now serve respectively as CEO and president of the
45-employee company.
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