Glacier Bay, Inc. was founded in 1990 with the goal of developing and commercializing new, environmentally-friendly technologies. The following year, that goal became reality with the introduction of the world's first Freon-free HFC-134a refrigeration system to the niche market of long-distance cruising sailboats. Timing of the product's release turned out to be particularly fortuitous. The US congress was hotly debating expansion of the previously ratified Montreal Protocol to completely eliminate ozone-depleting refrigerants. Established refrigeration system manufacturers opposed the legislation on the basis that technical challenges made it too risky to require transition to alternative refrigerants (i.e. HFC-134a) in such a short time frame. For those who supported the agreement, the fact that a new start-up like Glacier Bay was able to conquer the technical problems gave strength to their argument. The agreement was ultimately signed and took effect in 1992.

Reputation for innovation

The publicity gained during this time combined with the outstanding performance of the new refrigeration system quickly earned Glacier Bay a reputation for engineering excellence in thermal management. Within months, Fortune 500 companies and governmental organizations began calling on us for research and development work. Glacier Bay teamed with Westinghouse to create an ultra-high efficiency hermetic brushless DC compressor, a development which would eventually lead to Glacier Bay's groundbreaking variable-speed technology. Over the next thirteen years, the company expanded its expertise and technology portfolio, designing a cutting-edge thermal management system for IBM's S/390 mainframe computer, as well as systems for NASA, Hewlett-Packard, L3 Communications, Northrop Grumman, United Defense, Lockheed-Martin, DARPA and others. Meanwhile, we continued to manufacture and sell products under our own name to the marine pleasure-craft market.

A bold new direction

By 2003, our R&D experience began to crystallize into a new and much larger vision for the company. Increasingly, we had recognized the need to solve our customer's most complex R&D problems by developing highly controllable components and integrating them under a common control system. Why not expand the concept further by applying the same principle to every part of a power system? By removing the static (non-controllable) elements of the power chain and bringing the entire system under a single, dynamic control, it would be possible to increase performance and efficiency far beyond anything that would be possible by only improving individual components. Such a common energy platform could harness each component's strengths and increase them many times over, through an intelligent method of optimization and adaptation. This discovery revealed Glacier Bay's potential to tap into a much broader market. To test the theory, Glacier Bay redirected our R&D focus from external companies to internal work on the OSSA Powerlite® integrated power platform. As a market test bed, we chose an industry we know well, marine pleasure-craft. Now, rather than supplying a few subsystems, the challenge was to integrate all power production, distribution and utilization throughout the boat into a cohesive and intelligent control strategy. If it worked in boats, the same savings and advantages could be brought to almost any power system.

Pioneering the future

The first version of the new system was introduced to the marine industry in the fall of 2005. The advantages of the approach immediately caught the attention of prominent yacht builders and fleet owners like The Moorings. Six months later, the first systems were being installed and the large-scale potential of OSSA Powerlite became clear. In June 2006, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), one of the world's leading venture capital firms, made a major investment in Glacier Bay to accelerate the development and commercialization of the technology.  Today, our OSSA Powerlite common energy platform is leading the way into the future and delivering the prospect of eco-friendly technology, energy efficiency and superior performance to vital markets around the world.