Diffuse Energy
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Diffuse Energy was a Newcastle, Australia startup founded in 2018 by Joss Kesby, James Bradley and Samuel Evans out of the CSIRO ON accelerator. It built a diffuser-augmented micro wind turbine - a super-efficient small turbine and shroud design with its own controller - targeting remote power applications. After early experiments with luxury yachts, it pivoted to telecommunications towers, running an ARENA-backed multi-site project installing small wind turbines at remote Australian communication sites as a renewable alternative to diesel generators.
02 / Diffuse Energy FAILURE REASONS
Failure factors supported by the current evidence
AuManufacturing (Brent Balinski; LinkedIn publish 3 Nov 2024): former CTO James Bradley said Diffuse Energy wound up after semiconductor/controller parts (including a TI MOSFET gate driver) became scarce or unavailable at viable price after 2020, making a redesign too costly/risky; they quit after finishing delayed ARENA work.
Semiconductor/controller components became scarce or priced at ~3x; a critical 5% of parts stayed off-market, rendering the rest unusable.
Bradley said a redesign would have left a much more expensive, less viable controller with no clarity on when supply would resume.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Operations ended
AuManufacturing (3 Nov 2024): James Bradley said Diffuse Energy started wrapping up early in 2024 and decided to quit after finishing delayed ARENA work; co-founders planned a wake for the ended business.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
In 2018, Joss Kesby, James Bradley and Samuel Evans formed Diffuse Energy in Newcastle, Australia, via the CSIRO ON accelerator to commercialise a diffuser-augmented micro wind turbine concept developed during Kesby's PhD.
- 02
After early interest from luxury yacht owners, the company pivoted to telecommunications towers and ran an ARENA-backed multi-site project installing small turbines at remote Australian communication sites as a renewable alternative to diesel generators.
- 03
The global semiconductor shortage of the early 2020s made it impossible to build what they needed: the MOSFET products in their controllers were 'unicorns' that could not be replaced when the supply chain broke.
- 04
In 2024, the founders decided to end the business, winding up Diffuse Energy after the critical components effectively disappeared. No reliable loss figure was disclosed, so no loss amount is recorded.