FreeEnergyTimes

As we watch Steorn’s public demonstration of Orbo unfold from Dublin (currently on a holiday hiatus) it seems clear that from Steorn’s point of view it is all leading up to one date: February 1st, 2010. That is the date that the Steorn Knowledge Development Base (SKDB) opens for business — and this is a crucial part of Steorn’s business plan. The SKDB is the “online learning and developing community for building and developing Orbo”.

To this point, Steorn has been recieving little, if any revenue from its Orbo technology. To fund their activites they have relied on investment capital and their expenses to to this date have to have been significant. They have a staff of around twenty people who have been conducting R&D for years, they have a sophisticated marketing operation and a substantial web presence which must have required lots of expensive technological investment.

On February 1st things change. To access the SKDB you have to pay a license fee and the cheapest license (Developer License) is €419.00. According to Steorn commercial licenses are going to be available in the 2nd quarter in 2010 but fees have not yet been disclosed. So finally Steorn hopes to start generating revenues.

Now an interesting question is this. What is going to be required to induce people to pay a license fee? This brings us back to the whole purpose of what is going on in Dublin. In this demonstration, Steorn’s task is to provide enough convincing evidence to support their free energy claims that people will be willing to sign up for the SKDB in significant numbers starting in February. If Steorn cannot do this than the effort will have failed from their perspective.

This makes the January phase of the demonstration crucial. While to date there has been quite a lot of interest in what has been on display, there are lots of questions and still much wariness and skepticism among many observers. Steorn has said “the fun starts in January” and have promised live validation and replication in 2010. It remains to be seen how effective that will be — but in order for Steorn to be successful they have to be more forthcoming about their technology to convince people in large numbers to start paying for entry into the SKDB.

One of the interesting things about Steorn, in addition to their free energy claim, is the way they say they are going to implement Orbo technology. You might think with a discovery as revolutionary as  they are claiming, they would manufacture and sell Orbo-powered products.

Steorn has repeatedly stated, however, that they are not going to be in the business of making products. They are a small research and development company, employing under thirty people and apparently do not have plans to expand into a manufacturing operation.

Steorn CEO Sean McCarthy has stated “We have brought this technology pretty much as far as we as a business will bring it. We’re not in the business of building mobile phones or batteries or car engines or any of that stuff; we’re in the business of licensing this to companies that do that”.

Steorn has set up the Steorn Knowledge Development Base (SKDB) for licensees to learn about Orbo technology and to collaborate with other developers. Steorn’s web site provides an overview of the SKDB. From the information on their site, there are going to be three levels of licences available: Non-Commercial, Commercial, and Enterprise. The Non-Commercial and Commercial licenses will be available to anyone, but it appears that the Enterprise license will be restricted to businesses in the Automotive, Transportation, Aerospace and Mobile Consumer Electronics sectors. The fee for these licenses in not provided; however, Sean stated recently that they would be “low-cost”.

If Orbo is what Steorn says it is, then tremendous opportunities await individuals and companies who wish to get involved in the development of free energy products. It would appear likely that this licensing strategy would allow for a speedy development and dissemination of Orbo-powered products into the marketplace. I would expect we would see an “Orbo rush” with people everywhere in all kinds of industries trying to find ways to adapt to the new technology.

And this is what Sean wants people to do. In the recent Q&A exchange I asked him what he would say to people eager to get involved with Orbo. He replied “I would say that launch is not far away, that access to Orbo will be low cost and readily available. And finally I would say never let anyone do your thinking for you – get involved!”