MANITOWOC, Wis. (WLUK) — Energybank announced a new technology Monday. It’s called FUSION, and the Manitowoc company has been working on it for years.
“There really are no regular solar LED,” said founder Neal Verfuerth. “Everything on the market today has a battery and a lot of apparatus to make a grid connected, where this doesn’t have that.”
It looks like a regular light fixture but it uses the new fusion technology. The company says there are a lot of benefits to it.
Without converting the power, the lights have a longer life and they’re cost-effective.
A phone app also measures the amount of power to use based on how much sun the location is getting at the time.
The technology separates each user from the power grid, so each building can be lighted independently.
Gov. Scott Walker was at the facility Monday. While praising the company on its innovative LED lights, he said energybank continues to grow and be a leader in technology.
“It’s huge just looking at the number of employees. We’re talking just about energybank. The growth that they’ve had has more than doubled almost tripled the number of employees,” said Walker. “We’re going to need to attract more millennials here.”
Verfuerth says he’s also addressing workforce shortage starting right here in Manitowoc. He says the company is always looking for people “that have the skills that are just looking for getting in the new industry that’s kind of on the leading edge of things. Some really like it and some don’t, as things change very quickly in this industry.”
Walker says energybank is another example of bringing more talent to the state. The company plans on staying in Northeast Wisconsin.
“Great manufacturing base here, virtually easy to ship anywhere in the U.S. A lot of different reasons it just makes good sense.”
Technology and location, the company says, that both make good sense.