Dark Energy is a consumer tech brand founded in Provo, Utah, in 2012.
Garrett Aida left BYU's mechanical engineering program a few classes short of a degree, and his parents, KSL reported, were not happy about it at first. The first product of his Provo startup, the Reservoir charger, raised $173,000 on Kickstarter, and KSL said the company set a state record in 2013. The parents have since come around.
Aida and co-founder William Lam started with a problem most people with a phone have had. Aida told KSL that most of the time, out rock climbing and hiking with GoPros and phones, they did not have the power they needed. The Reservoir sold for $99, and the company says it launched the whole business.
The second product came from a bowhunt. A WildBounds profile of the company puts Aida in the Tushar Mountains of central Utah, chasing a mule deer, when his radio antenna snapped and his GPS, soaked for the third time that day, started to glitch. He built what he needed and named it Poseidon, because water and electricity are, in his words, mortal enemies.
The first Poseidon went to Kickstarter in January 2015 and passed $50,000 in its first day, Crowdfund Insider reported. It held 8,000 mAh in a case rated IP68 and MIL-STD 810G, with a six-foot drop rating and, per Aida, the ability to survive four feet of water for 45 minutes. The current Poseidon Pro costs $99.99 and comes with the company's five-year limited warranty.
Cold is the other enemy. The company's hunters page warns that most electronic devices become extremely unreliable below minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit. The company also runs a battery recycling page that sends customers to Call2Recycle drop-off sites instead of the trash.
Smaller things followed. The Poseidon Nano is pocket-sized and MagSafe-ready for $49.99, and the Pharos flashlight puts 1,800 lumens into a body that weighs 4.7 ounces.
The line has since grown into power stations and solar panels. The Recon 2000 stores 2,016 watt-hours and sells for $1,999.99. The company says its customers include military units and federal agencies such as the FBI, and WildBounds reports that the battery packs have been shot with a 12-gauge and run over by a dump truck. Those claims come from the company and a WildBounds profile rather than from a test lab.
The Sentinel light now extends to 75.6 inches and comes with a wireless remote. The idea for all of it, according to that profile, started on a mountainside in central Utah.
Co-founders Garrett Aida and William Lam named Dark Energy after the astrophysics force that makes the universe expand faster.
