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With Over 600 Systems Installed In Pilot
Programs In The US, Canada, Europe, Asia and Australia, MicroPlanet Is Ahead
Of Schedule To Commercialize Their Technology, Which Significantly Lowers
Energy Consumption, Utility Bills And Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Energy
Energy Technology
(MCTYF-OTC: BB, MP-TSXV)
MicroPlanet Technology Corp.
100 South King Street, Suite 240
Seattle, WA 98104
Phone: 206-625-0851
Bruce Lisanti
President and CEO
Interview conducted by:
Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor
CEOCFOinterviews.com
Published – December 21, 2007
BiO:
Bruce Lisanti - President and Chief Executive Officer
Mr. Lisanti spent the first part of his career in positions of increasing
responsibility with Electronic Data Systems (EDS) and General Electric
Company (GE). At GE, Mr. Lisanti was instrumental in growing the Computer
Services Division from start-up to over $1.2 billion of revenue through
internal growth and acquisitions. For the last 15 years, Mr. Lisanti has
been a principal in several successful start-up and high growth
companies. He was a Senior Vice President for Rental Service Corporation,
helping it grow from start up to $650 million in sales prior to being
acquired by Atlas Copco. Mr. Lisanti was a principle in Petroleum
Information Corporation, a private company that provides high technology
services in the energy industry and as the President and CEO of FirmLogic, he
helped complete a successful turnaround of the company.
Company Profile:
MicroPlanet's technology reduces the
total amount of energy we need to produce by significantly increasing the
efficiency of the electric grid. MicroPlanet's products dynamically manage
the voltage delivered to a business or home, which saves energy, improves
utility services and helps reduce greenhouse emissions.
CEOCFO: Mr. Lisanti, how has MicroPlanet
changed under your leadership?
Mr. Lisanti: “MicroPlanet, like a lot of
start-up companies was run initially by people who had great technical
skills and good concepts of what the product could do but had never
implemented or built a large-scale business. The Board of Directors brought
me in because I had experience building several successful, start-up
companies. MicroPlanet had terrific technology. What changed when I came on
board was the development and implementation of a strategic plan to take the
technology to the market place with a solid growth strategy over a five-year
period.”
CEOCFO: How
is our implementation working?
Mr. Lisanti: “It is working well. We are
a little ahead of plan. We have had quite a few pilots go in all over the
world. We have about six hundred systems installed in pilots now in the US,
Canada, Europe, Asia and Australia. We are getting extremely good results
from the pilots, so I would say we are probably two or three months ahead of
where we expected to be at this point.”
CEOCFO:
Please tell us about the basic technology.
Mr. Lisanti: “What MicroPlanet
technology does is significantly improve the performance of the electrical
distribution grid. The grid was actually designed by Edison 100 years or so
ago. There have been technology improvements, but the fundamental design of
the grid is the same. A very interesting statistic is that from the point of
generation, to the point of consumption, meaning from a power plant using
fossil fuels to the utility customer, about two thirds of the total energy
generated is lost in the generation and transmission process. If we save a
kilowatt on the consumption side, either at a business or a residence, that
means we do not have to generate three kilowatts! That is a statistic from
the US Department of Energy. This has huge implications for reducing
greenhouse gas emissions. By making the distribution grid significantly more
efficient, we have the potential to greatly reduce energy bills for our
customers and substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
CEOCFO:
What is it that MicroPlanet makes and at what point does it enter the
picture in electricity usage?
Mr. Lisanti: “We design products that
are installed at the point of consumption. For a residential customer this
is at the meter box on their house. For a commercial customer, we install
near their electrical service entrance. For utility applications, they
install our systems on their power poles. Installations are simple. Our
products are UL/CSA approved and can be installed by licensed electricians.”
CEOCFO: Who
is buying your products; what is your target market?
Mr. Lisanti: “We break the market for
our products down into three principle areas, which are commercial,
residential and utilities.
The first market segment is commercial
customers. We have put pilots in across the country with grocery stores,
convenience stores, fast-food markets and others, the ideal being that we
can significantly reduce their power consumption. When the pilots are
successful, they can deploy 500 or 1,000 systems.
The second market for us will ultimately be the
largest one, which is residential. We have been working with primarily large
builders and property managers, companies like Actus and Forest City that
manage 40 or 50,000 properties. They are putting pilots in place to test the
equipment out in their environments. When these pilots go well, they also
have the potential to deploy large quantities.
The third market is utility customers. They buy
the products to improve power quality on their networks. We are a very
effective and less costly solution than they have had historically to
improve power for customers on their networks. It helps them avoid adding
significant amounts of infrastructure enhancements. If you go to a city
where there has been substantial growth, or an increase in electrical
consumption, it puts a lot of stress on their networks to deliver more
power. We are a very cost-effective efficient solution to help in that
equation. Our first large order ($6M) several months ago came from a utility
in Australia called Ergon Energy; they initially are ordering about 3000
systems. We expect that may go up to as many as 50,000 over the next several
years.”
CEOCFO:
What is the competitive landscape look like?
Mr. Lisanti: “We are not running into
similar products in the competitive environment. What we run into routinely
is competition for capital budgets within the companies. Typically, they
have already a plan for a year or two to deploy energy conservation
measures. We go in and say here is another alternative that you have not
looked at before so we are effectively competing for their capital budgets.”
CEOCFO: You
have such a wide range of potential customers, how do you decide on your
target group?
Mr. Lisanti: “Since the company is small
and has limited resources, we have been very selective in terms of who we
have chosen to work with on the pilots. Typically these are very
high-profile customers, I could name twenty pilots and you would know all of
the companies. There are pilot customers in the convenience store arena that
are now installing pilots who can deploy 10,000 systems. When we select
pilot customers, we work with well-known customers with whom a successful
pilot could result in a very large scale deployment.”
CEOCFO: How
do you manufacture the product?
Mr. Lisanti: “We contract out all
manufacturing to Flextronics. They are one of the largest contract
manufacturers worldwide. They have a large number of plants throughout the
world and are capable of ramping up as fast as we need them to.”
CEOCFO:
Will you tell us your agreement with Ergon Energy?
Mr. Lisanti: “Ergon Energy is one of our
largest utilities in Australia. There are eleven utilities there and in
addition to Ergon, we are already in discussions with eight others.
Australia is an interesting environment in that they have tremendous amounts
of natural resources; but about 90% of their power is generated from coal.
Their new prime minister just signed the Kioto Agreement and they are under
a lot of pressure to do things differently to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions. Ergon is a leader in using advanced technology to improve the
efficiency of their network. They have a number of initiatives going with us
to reduce their dependency on fossil fuels and improve the performance of
their grid. We help by making it more efficient so less energy is lost. We
are working with Ergon on a number of projects to make their grid much more
efficient and substantially reduce the amount of energy they need to
generate as well as lower the bills for their customers.”
CEOCFO:
When will it be available for people at home?
Mr. Lisanti: “We have been making
residential products for several years and have systems that have been
installed and running for as long as eight years. As our manufacturing gears
up, we will start making them available to individual homeowners. Our plan
for 2008 is to work through large-scale distributors and developers rather
than individual homeowners.”
CEOCFO:
What is your financial picture?
Mr. Lisanti: “It is very strong. The
company is traded on the Toronto Venture Exchange. We have standing offers
from a number of investment banks that will raise capital for us as we need
it. Right now the company is closely held, without much float in the stock.
I classify the company as transitioning from an extended R&D period into
large-scale commercialization. We will start shipping commercial units and
generating revenue in the 1st quarter.”
CEOCFO: Why
should potential investors be interested?
Mr. Lisanti: “First is that energy
conservation is a very hot area and will continue to be for quite awhile. It
is not something that is going to come and go. Our ability to economically
reduce energy consumption and substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions
are going to be of interest to investors for a long time. Secondly,
MicroPlanet has spent about five years in proof of concept and in working
with utilities to prove not only that the technology works, but that it is
reliable. For the utilities to install it on their own networks, it has to
work for fifteen or twenty years. We spent a lot of time working with them
to make sure the equipment is as dependable and reliable as they need it to
be. Current investors can take advantage of our last five years of R&D.
Thirdly, we are seeing a significant amount of interest and traction from
customers that want to buy the equipment; Ergon is the first of quite a few
orders that we expect to announce within the next few months with other
utilities, with commercial customers and with some large residential
builders and property managers.”
CEOCFO: It
is exciting times for MicroPlanet!
Mr. Lisanti: “It really is; it has been
five years or so getting to this point but we are now tipping over into
large scale commercialization and revenue generation. We are growing very
rapidly, which is an exciting time for the company.”
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