5Q: Stephen Eaves

STEPHEN EAVES, founder and CEO of VoltServer Inc. located in East Greenwich. VoltServer Inc. provides digitized electricity which allows touch-safe power distribution to electric devices. PBN FILE PHOTO/ MICHAEL SALERNO
STEPHEN EAVES, founder and CEO of VoltServer Inc. located in East Greenwich. VoltServer Inc. provides digitized electricity which allows touch-safe power distribution to electric devices. PBN FILE PHOTO/ MICHAEL SALERNO

1 VoltServer Inc. received about $5 million in venture capital in 2015. How will you use this funding?

Including the 2015 round, we have raised approximately $10.2 million in financing. The financing is primarily focused on scaling the company over the next 18 months or so to meet the exponentially increasing demand for our products. We are looking to double our revenue and employee count from year to year.

2 How exactly does digital electricity work and how is it different than alternating current or direct current?

Much like music and data [have] moved from an analog to digital format over the last couple of decades, VoltServer has created a natively digital form of electricity using a protocol we invented called Packet Energy Transfer. Even at high voltages and power levels it can be touched without causing a shock and can detect if even a minute amount of energy is lost to say a poor connection or short circuit. It also contains embedded data to monitor and control things. Because of these characteristics, digital electricity is safer, smarter, faster and much less expensive to install than the conventional format.

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3 VoltServer has operated in the mobile infrastructure space. Can you explain how that works?

Every time you send a text or stream a video on your mobile phone or iPad, millions of bits of data are being moved. Every five years, the amount of data we move increases by a factor of 10. But each bit of data needs a small amount of energy for processing and transmission. When all of that is put together it adds up to what is approaching 10 percent of the world’s electricity use. VoltServer is positioning itself to be the standard way of powering that infrastructure.

4 Could digital electricity work in other markets?

We are very excited about new markets in the areas of LED lighting, data centers and solar. One particularly interesting area is vertical farming, where food is grown locally inside, with no pesticides, 1 percent of the water use and 75 times the productivity per square foot.

5 How else would you like to use digital electricity?

We see digital electricity being the “third form” of electricity. For example, a way to power infrastructure in emerging countries. Much like China never bothered to install a wired phone system and went straight to mobile phones, we envision these countries going straight to digital electricity as they evolve. •

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