Licensing Guidelines
* These Licensing Guidelines are subject to certain additional terms and conditions and to change without notice.
Business Model.
Our business model is for our Licensees and us to earn income under long term electricity supply agreements with customers rather than to sell Power Pontoons. This means that a Licensee will need to find customers who have a river or canal flowing through its property who will buy electricity from him at a discount because the customer provides the energy source or “fuel”. In South Africa, the rule of thumb is a discount of 12.5% in the first two to four years, and thereafter a discount of 25% from current utility rates or self generation with fossil fuel.
We require a Licensing Fee and thereafter an ongoing 7.5% Royalty Payment from gross revenues of our Licensees.
Important Pontoon installation, location and regulatory considerations.
If the country or territory a prospective Licensee wishes to acquire a license for prohibits the generation and/or sale of electricity to third parties by Independent Power Producers, an IP License from us may not be feasible.
In circumstances where a river or canal flows through a customer’s property, the customer must have the requisite authorization for the installation from applicable regulators. In the case of navigable waterways additional permits may need to be obtained and care should be taken with the installation, anchoring and mooring as to not hinder marine traffic, or have Pontoon anchor ropes or cables becoming ensnared by passing vessels.
Where a customer is located some distance from a river or canal and overhead power lines need to traverse land not owned by the customer, permission or right of way needs to be obtained from the owner(s) of such land.
How it all works.
A Licensee can purchase an exclusive license from us for the use of the Intellectual Property for a specific geographic territory under the terms of a Licensing Agreement.
After we’ve learned more about a prospective Licensee’s qualifications and his ability to make a commercial success of a License, We send a Technology Evaluation Confidentiality Agreement which needs to be signed and returned to us. After that we either correspond or chat with the interested party by phone or on Skype to learn more about the business opportunity and based on the outcomes, we then send our Licensing Term Sheet which sets out the terms and conditions under which we are prepared to enter into a Licensing Agreement.
A part of the conditions of a Licensing Agreement is that a prospective Licensee is required to purchase and pay for one Power Pontoon of at least 5kW capacity which we will build to the Licensor’s site specific conditions and ship to him. Upon execution of the Licensing Agreement we require a deposit of 50% of the Pontoon Purchase price with the balance due upon shipment.
There are several reasons for this, among others;
- We want to make sure that the Licensee has had an opportunity to install and test the power Pontoon for 30 days in real life operating conditions and is satisfied as to the functionality.
- Since the Power Pontoon needs to be fabricated in the Licensee’s Territory, the Licensee can get quotes from local metal fabrication shops after showing them an actual example of the Pontoon, fabrication and materials involved.
- It is a good opportunity for the Licensee to demonstrate the Power Pontoon to prospective customers, utility companies and governmental permitting authorities.
The design and fabrication of the first Power Pontoon will also serve as an interactive online training session for the Licensee in order to familiarize the Licensee with the process and software program. Customer support via telephone or Skype for software issues will be available 24/7, and engineering support by email first within 24 hours, which can be escalated to real time engineering telephone or Skype support if need be.
Pontoon Design and Build.
We have adapted a CAD software program which a Licensee can access over the internet from our servers located in Houston, Tx with redundant servers in Capetown, SA and Hamburg, Germany in a cloud computing environment. It is compatible with most CAD software editions and kept current with newer versions from the different software vendors.
The Licensee can enter data into the system and the program will then generate a set of technical drawings which can be printed and/or sent to a fabrication shop in electronic or printed format suitable for the machining and fabrication of a site specific Power Pontoon. The program will calculate stresses and types and sizes or materials, type and specifications of the generators, switchgear and control equipment required.
Each set of drawings will also contain the number, types and sizes of bolts and fasteners, bearing types and sizes, generator weight, sizes and mounting brackets needed, size and types of electrical control boxes and inverters if required. It will also produce an exploded view of the Power Pontoon for assembly purposes which will indicate which part is connected where and in what sequence as per the example below:
Technical
The first factor to be determined should be the economic viability of an installation. For example; if a location has sufficient hydrokinetic energy for (say) only one 5 kilo Watt Pontoon it may not be financially feasible for the Licensee. If the location has capacity for 1 megawatt, but is 20 miles from the nearest interconnection point over rough terrain it may also not be feasible.
A Power Pontoon will always be engineered and built to site specific conditions as one will very seldom find identical site conditions of water flow speed, depth, width etc in other locations, which means that each Pontoon will be configured differently.
Electrical.
Licensees may select their own choice of generators, voltage control and inverters from our recommended sources of low/variable speed Permanent Magnet generators and who’s specifications and drawings are incorporated in our CAD system. Our recommended vendors all comply with ISO 9001 and various international specifications and in all cases have supplied thousands of components to customers worldwide. Warranties, prices and terms are similar between factories, but we leave equipment choice to the discretion of the Licensee. For this and other reasons our License specifically excludes warranties or guarantees on fabrication or components.
Monitoring, Enforcement.
Our policy in respect of IP theft is very simple: Zero Tolerance.
We have spent years and a huge amount of money to develop our technology and would like to make it available as widely as possible throughout the world. This is not only for us and our Licensee Partners for monetary reward, but to also enable the broadest sustainable renewable energy development.
As with any proprietary Intellectual Property, we protect and enforce our and our Licensees’ rights and financial interests against infringement and illegal competition. Under WIPO, we have the right and the means to protect and enforce our interests in all WIPO signatory countries.
For example; You as our protected licensee would not like it if one of your customers or your fabricator built these machines and went into business for themselves and started competing with, and undercutting you as a Licensee.
Upon issuance of a license, the Licensee and the fabrication facility is registered in our system. When a user designs a Power Pontoon, various data is entered along with the design factors such as the customer, customer location, PPA terms and conditions, parts numbers etc.
Our system then correlates this information with the remote readable meter on the Pontoon for the Licensee’s billing and fault sensing/tampering alarms and for our Royalty Payment tracking and auditing, purposes. This information is also sent to our field auditors who will from time to time conduct field inspections and who will also check with permitting authorities and utility companies.
Violations of the terms of the License Agreement or breach of contract may ultimately result in the termination of the License Agreement and removal or destruction of Power Pontoons installed and criminal prosecution.