Waste not. ElectraTherm turns "waste" heat into an electricity source

A couple of months back, I reported about an IBM data center project in Switzerland that was shunting its excess heat "waste" toward warming up a public swimming pool. Along those lines, a company from Carson City, Nev., has come up with a commercial waste heat generator called the ElectraTherm Green Machine that takes heat created by other sources and harnesses it for a useful purpose.

The premise behind this thing is that it "recycles" heat of about 200 degrees Fahrenheit into electricity at a cost of about 3 cents to 4 cents per kilowatt-hours during the payback period and less than 1 cent per kilowatt hour later on, according to the company. ElectraTherm has installed the first production unit of its technology at Southern Methodist University, which the company figures can produce electricity to power 40 2,000-square-foot homes. Here's a podcast from the company's CEO that explains the gadget in more detail.