Origin Story

The origin story of Mobile Clean Energy is an evolution of Ah Ha! moments.

Initially, Founder Charles Phillips was assessing franchising small utility scale 1-10MW solar farms and realized that batteries were essential to economically sell power at the most valuable time rather than the moment of generation. But what really frustrated Phillips was the permitting hoops and the location limitations of connecting to the grid.

The true Ah Ha! came with the realization that the new loads, especially associated with transportation were having similar problems on the other end of the grid.

If you are already planning to have a multi MWh intermodal freight container battery in the system, why not just charge it in one location and discharge it in another? You are suddenly no longer location constrained. The grid is just in the way. If you look at a power bill the largest charges are not for the power but the overhead to get it there.

And Mobile Clean Energy was born.

Considering the problems associated with various sector markets, the next big Ah Ha! was that every Diesel-Electric Locomotive was in fact, already an electric locomotive with electric propulsion motors.

Phillips heard that various locomotive manufacturers were announcing new Battery Electric Locomotives with fixed built-in batteries. That didn’t make sense. You wouldn’t buy a Battery powered drill that didn’t have interchangeable batteries.

Thinking back to steam engines and the car behind the locomotive was the coal car or coal tender in railroad terms. So, take a standard intermodal well-car with four 20’ containers, and if they are batteries, you have a battery tender.

Connect it to an existing Diesel-Electric locomotive and you have a hybrid that is zero emissions capable as long as you have charged batteries.

Almost more importantly a typical Diesel-Electric locomotive has a 50year life expectancy. When you have thousands of them, that is a capital asset you don’t want to strand and have to write-off.

And Mobile Clean Energy had a viable market.

The 6 Class 1 railroads in North America use more than 3B gallons of diesel. Even at $3.00/gal. that is a $9B market to get started with.