As a child, Steve Eaves remembers taking electrical wiring, tying it together and asking his mother to plug it into the wall. The result was a big, blue fire.
“All she said was, ‘Don’t tell your father,’ ” said Eaves, vice president of Eaves Devices and winner of the 2011 Providence Business News’ Energy & the Environment Innovation Award. The Charlestown-based company has developed a technology that separates electrical power into short pulses and can continue to translate power even in an outage.
His latest project chips away at one of the foremost issues in Rhode Island and across the country, renewable energy. Just last month, Gov. Lincoln D. Chafee signed into law four renewable energy bills aimed at helping the state create a future that supports a green environment.
Along those lines, Eaves is developing a charging system for electric hybrid vehicles that can be powered from different sources on the road, such as electrical signals at a stoplight or exposed conductors on the road surface. With the new technology, called Packet Energy Transfer, each packet, sent by a transmitter, has identifying features with a digital key or code. The packet can recognize if the code is incorrect and the transmitter stops sending the packets.
This technology allows the electric vehicles to be charged while traveling, rather than only at a single charging station.
“I’ve always had an interest in electricity and energy, and electric transportation is the key to electric renewable energy,” he said.
Eaves, 47, said he invested $60,000 of his own money into the venture. His hope is to first apply road-surface charging to electric taxis and shuttles.
“After college, I started getting into batteries,” he said. “In my 30s, I was consulted on the government’s B-2 bomber when they upgraded the battery. “I got a contract to do the power.”
The fund was created in 1997 by then-Gov. Lincoln C. Almond and the General Assembly to help fund new technology-based companies. It is financed by the General Assembly. Since it began, Slater has provided funding to more than 90 technology ventures in Rhode Island. It has invested more than $20 million in public-sector funding into companies that have raised more than $200 million in external money.
Eaves later sold Modular Energy for an undisclosed amount of money, but said it was enough to pay Slater back and still have money left over.
Eaves described his Packet Energy Transfer invention as “the phone current on a power grid. It’s like kids talking over a string in cups.”
But it takes the power and it breaks it into packets that it needs to get to its destination without lines getting lost. The packets can be sent separately over different paths to the destination. The packets are then reassembled to the original message.
The inspiration for his invention is to find a new way to provide power from the road surface to electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.
The hybrid vehicle is like a regular Prius, except they have a much larger battery that allows the vehicle to run on just electric power for 30 to 40 miles. After that, they revert back to being regular hybrids, which are plugged in and recharged at night.
His wife of 23 years, “always had a lot of patience on her part,” he said. “I’ve blown up a lot of things. I always wanted to be an inventor from a very young age.”
Holly Eaves, his wife, remembers those days in college when her then-boyfriend spoke of being an inventor and one day owning his own business.
But the first time she visited his apartment, she knew he was serious about his engineering aspirations. The only thing there was a drafting table and a lot of electronic devices.
“He never stops thinking, he’s like, ‘What should I do next?’ ” Holly Eaves said.
She remembers thinking that one of his ideas was dumb, until she saw him bring it to fruition.
“I never did that again,” Holly Eaves said. “I always thought he was creative, but I never really knew how creative he was.”
Holly Eaves used to work with her husband on his projects for many years before becoming a teacher. She is an electrical engineer by training and currently a math teacher at East Greenwich High School.
“She partnered with me to bring Eaves Devices out of the basement,” Steve Eaves said of his wife. “She championed the organizational and quality systems that allowed us to make real products.” The couple has two daughters; one is studying materials engineering in college and the other is in high school.
Holly Eaves wasn’t the only one who believed in Steve Eaves’ ideas and knack for solving technology problems.
Mentor, partner and friend Thorne Sparkman, managing director for Slater Technology Fund, says Eaves has an incredible knowledge of technology and how to sell it.
“He has a deep wonder of where this technology fixes into the big picture,” Sparkman said. “He is not an inventor who stands in the lab. That’s what makes Steve so spectacular. He is a trusted adviser to me. He is a great inventor and we hope to fund him again. … If he doesn’t blow himself up. He’s a keeper.” •
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