http://solepowertech.com
Carnegie Mellon’s Project Olympus
Hahna Alexander (left) and Matthew Stanton, co-founders of SolePower.
www.cmu.edu/olympus/
Photographs courtesy SolePower
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SolePower
AlphaLab
http://alphalab.org
“
SolePower’s energy harvesting technology can be embedded in low cost sandals which, after one
day of walking, can power an efficient LED light for the whole
”
night.
14 MAY/JUNE 2015
based lamps, with kerosene as the predominant fuel, which releases black carbon into the atmosphere and causes global warming. “One kilogram of black carbon, a byproduct of incomplete combustion, produces as much warming in one month as 700 kilograms of carbon dioxide does over 100 years. However, when the source of black carbon is removed, the warming it causes drops rapidly, unlike greenhouse gases,” says Davitian. SolePower’s environmental contributions will depend on the reach—and walking endurance—of its customers. Upon completion of product trials, the company plans to market EnSoles first to outdoor enthusiasts. In the United States, this demographic includes about 35 million hikers, backpackers and campers, who travel into the wilderness with no access to power other than the batteries they bring with them. After building its brand with this niche consumer group, SolePower hopes to focus on general consumers and global markets. SolePower originated out of a class project at Carnegie Mellon University in 2011. Hahna Alexander, co-founder and chief technology
officer, and Matthew Stanton, co-founder and chief executive officer, were part of a group instructed to develop a product that would benefit their fellow students. The group designed an energy-harvesting shoe that powered embedded LED lights, enabling wearers to travel safely in the dark. When the class ended, Alexander and Stanton expanded on the prototype and built a company around it. They ran a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2013 and partnered with Carnegie Mellon’s Project Olympus, along with AlphaLab, a Pittsburghbased startup accelerator program, to raise the funds necessary to develop EnSoles. As EnSoles near their mass-market debut, Davitian, who learned about SolePower through AlphaLab, is excited to help the business “expand the scope of energy harvesting by making human power a practical method of generating electricity.” But, the real fun will be seeing how that human-generated energy changes lives and helps clean up the planet. Carrie Loewenthal Massey is a New York Citybased freelance writer.