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  COMPANY PROFILE
   
 

On December 22, 2006 Open Energy Corporation acquired WaterEye and its proprietary remote water monitoring systems. Open Energy Corporation is a renewable energy (RE) company focused on the development and commercialization of a portfolio of technologies capable of delivering low-risk, cost-competitive electricity, fresh water and related commodities on a global basis. Open Energy offers building-integrated photovoltaic (PV) roofing materials for commercial, industrial, and residential markets. Marketed under the trade name SolarSave®, the product line includes roofing membranes, roofing tiles, custom architectural PV glass, and balance of systems equipment such as inverters, combiners, and accessories. The Company also holds an exclusive, worldwide license to a solar thermal technology called SunCone™ CSP (Concentrating Solar Power), which is currently being developed to produce electricity and potable water using only the power of the sun. The company's mission is to enhance life by harnessing the power of the sun. The more information about Open Energy Corporation please visit www.openenergycorp.com

Our WaterEye monitoring products grew out of our work as system integrators and software developers for the ultra pure water (UPW) industry. These UPW systems use reverse osmosis, ion exchange, micro-filtration and disinfection processes on a regular basis. Our original idea was to provide operational support services to large ultra-pure water users, primarily in the semiconductor and power industries. To do this required that operating information be extracted from the process controllers and manipulated mathematically to "normalize" performance back to standard or startup conditions. With current operations compared to standard or nameplate conditions, reasonable assumptions about the health and maintenance of the system could be made. A semiconductor facility costs in the order billions, and the water treatment plant a few million. Since small aberrations in water quality can greatly impact chip or disc drive yield we believed that facility managers tasked with improving yield would enjoy such a technology offering. Key to making this program feasible was developing a means to extract data from the control systems and network of a very expensive, very secretive facility without having ANY possibility or suggestion that we or others using our channel if inadvertently left open that we could affect the controls of the primary facility. Thus was born the idea of WaterEye.

   
   
  COMPANY HISTORY
   
 

In 1998, Internet connectivity was by no means ubiquitous and even domain name ownership was not well understood. (Note that you can also reach us through other names we own such as reverseosmosis.com and microfilter.com) In that time the primary method for remote monitoring at far distances outside of a corporate or government WAN involved "polling", whereby the local computer collected data at regular intervals and uploaded this data when requested by an incoming request. The incoming request was normally mediated by a phone call, but TCP/IP requests were also beginning to appear. The idea we had was to make the local computer fully autonomous, meaning that it sent data without any requests being forwarded to it. We further improved on this by having the local computer send its data to a database. Once the information was in the database, it was relatively straightforward to develop web pages that utilized this data.

We had never seen anyone do data collection like this so we decided to apply for a patent in the latter part of 1998. On September 11, 2001 (yes that is correct) the patent office mailed out our notice of allowance for our first patent - 6332110. WaterEye now has several issued patents and others pending.

Today, WaterEye has evolved into a highly reliable remote monitoring system, secure enough to be located within refineries, power stations and complex manufacturing facilities such as semiconductor fabs. Industrial and municipal water and wastewater treatment plant operators rely on WaterEye to provide the primary alarms and alert functions when they are not physically present on site. Municipal plants not only use WaterEye for alarm functions but to generate state and federally mandated water quality and discharge reports. For desalination systems, WaterEye provides near real time calculations to normalize data back to baseline conditions, allowing operators to assess the health of the membranes and resins on an ongoing basis. Of course WaterEye technology is not limited to water or wastewater operations and can be used for a wide variety of monitoring purposes in a wide variety of applications.

WaterEye is now offered as a subscription based service where WaterEye Corporation provides all of the equipment, software, and IT services on a monthly basis. WaterEye software can also be licensed for multiple installation and deployment within the licensee's own data processing department.

   
   
  COMPANY HEADQUARTERS
   
  WaterEye Corp. is located in beautiful Grass Valley, California approximately 50 miles East of Sacramento. Our community is nestled at the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains at a 2,500 foot elevation. Our rural area is known for its beautiful environment and rich California history.

Click here for driving directions from Sacramento International and Reno Airports.

 
   
 
 
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