Electroflow: Made in Columbia, used worldwide

On a Friday night in Columbia, Dr. Mike Mehrdad pondered a problem he couldn’t solve.

“The issue was, ‘How would you be able to recycle wasted energy, protect equipment and machinery and save energy at the same time?’” Mehrdad said.

When books and professors couldn’t answer his question, he decided to make a machine that could: Electroflow, the only 11-in-1 energy saving system in the world.

In its beginning stages, the machine could only do three energy saving functions at once, but as Mehrdad worked on it, he added more.

“I fiddled with this and fiddled with that, and finally came up with four and then five and then six and then seven, and today it’s 11. The 11th one we just added last year,” Mehrdad said.

The 11-in-1 Electroflow, produced by Electenergy Technologies Inc., recycles waste in the flow of electricity to save energy. Mehrdad says that Electroflow can provide energy savings of up to 34 percent.

What makes Electroflow special is not only that it recycles waste within the flow of electricity, but also that it does so from one machine performing 11 functions at once.

“Other systems don’t have near as many features, and you have to get separate models for these,” said Brian Hays, a sales representative at ETI.

“We have no competition in the world. None. Zero,” Mehrdad said.

Electroflow’s beginnings:

The night Mehrdad created Electroflow, he had no idea that it would be as successful as it has been.

“I had no idea, no idea at all. I just did it because I was playing, you know, just working with electrical stuff and energy,” Mehrdad said.

ETI’s first Electroflow installation was in St. Louis, at a plastics company.

“They said, ‘We won’t pay you anything. Put it in; if it works then we’ll pay you,’” Mehrdad said. “But then they said, ‘If it works, we’ll give you a good reference here, and you can just sell to others.’”

“I said okay because we didn’t have any choice. We hadn’t sold to anybody.”

The installation went well, and the company’s success blossomed from there.

“It was an overnight sensation, I guess you’d say,” Mehrdad remembers. “All of a sudden, I was getting calls from everywhere in the United States. I mean, in a matter of literally less than a month after that, we got tremendous recognition from all over.”

The US Department of Commerce and Missouri Department of Economic Development helped promote Electroflow, which boosted ETI’s national and international profile.

“They helped us a lot. They promoted us there, and from there we started to expand to the international market,” Mehrdad said.

A closer look at Electroflow:

In order to recycle waste in electric current, Electroflow uses 11 energy saving functions at once, and a major one is dealing with harmonics, the waste present in electric flow.

“We’re able to take those harmonics and make them back into usable electricity,” said Brian Hays.

Electroflow is for business clients only, but Hays said Electroflow should have a residential model developed within a year or so. For the industrial units sold now, there are five different Electroflow models, which are made for different sized buildings.

“The five models satisfy everybody,” Mehrdad said. “Everybody in the world, regardless of their physical size or operation, it satisfies everybody in the world.”

At Electenergy Technologies, 18 people assemble the models by hand, and the models are then distributed to 112 different countries.

Not only has the business found success with Electroflow, but it has also created another device, the Harmonitor 3000, which helps assess problems present in electricity flow. Mehrdad says the Harmonitor is like a doctor: it diagnoses the problems.

“In order to see what kind of problem you have, somebody has to diagnose it; somebody has to give a check-up,” Mehrdad said.

The Harmonitor’s process takes 15 to 30 minutes and gives millions of readings per second.

“We know in real time what your building was experiencing,” Hays said.

ETI gives these check-ups for free— and then offers a money-back guarantee on its services with Electroflow.

Mehrdad said Electroflow’s worldwide reach, despite being hand-assembled by a small company in Columbia, Missouri, shows just how special the model is.

“We really are unique in the world,” he said. “It may not look it, but we really are. All out of Columbia, Missouri.”