In March 2008, under some of Northern California’s tallest trees, Provo resident and business entrepreneur Glenn Jakins was camping with his family when the raucous, vibrating whine of a neighboring RV generator suddenly shattered the quiet of the redwood forest.
The racket carried on for hours as Jakins, then 41, became increasingly irritated. Eventually it shook loose an idea: Jakins vowed to invent a portable generator that was silent.
When he sallied forth into this project, developing a silent generator, Jakins quickly realized he needed to look at clean energy solutions. He wanted a battery that could load up a charge quickly and store enough power to run lights or a refrigerator for several days. The battery would have to be smaller and lighter than the standard lead-acid battery, and most of all, environmentally friendly.
It was during a trip to China that he discovered a lithium-iron-phosphate battery that would power the Humless generator.
After several failed attempts at building the generator, Jakins recruited the help of Peter Ransom, a Manufacturing Engineering Student at Brigham Young University, to see if he could help solve some of the issues. Ransom easily found solutions to difficult issues and in May 2010 he and Jakins went to China to look at mass production alternatives. They decided to produce the components of the generator in China and assemble everything in the USA to control quality.
In December 2010, they were ready to launch their first product, the "Roadrunner", a portable 10AH 12V battery with inverter and charging system. In February 2011 they launched the Sentinel, which boasts a 50AH 12V LIFEPO4 battery with pure sine wave inverter, battery management system and capacity to be expanded to four times its size with daisy chained add on batteries.
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