Vegawatt: Making Restaurants Into Power Plants

Sometimes I wish I were clever enough to be an inventor. The extent of my building ingenuity came when I was about 7 years old, when I attempted to strap a bundle of sticks to my skateboard. The idea was when I set them on fire, my skateboard would get really fast, because the burning sticks would be like a jet. Yeah, that didn't go over so well with my mom.

However, this is definitely not the case for James Peret, inventor of the Vegawatt, a brand new invention that restaurants around the country could soon be dying to get their hands on. What is the Vegawatt, you ask? Basically, the Vegawatt acts as a generator that "burns the waste oil from restaurants' deep fryers to generate electricity and hot water".

About 80 gallons of waste oil translates into about 5 kilowatts of power, which could save restaurants around $1,000 a month in utility costs. After a few years, the machine practically pays for itself, and then starts to save restaurants money both for electricity and also in the fees for hauling off waste oil, as it is a hazardous waste and can't just be dumped into the gutter.

I have to be honest, I'm totally shocked that nobody's thought of this idea before. Sounds like a great way to help dispose of waste and then turn it back around into profit for restaurant owners. To read more about the Vegawatt, head on over to Wired.