Local Teams Do Well in Latest Pitch Contests

Local Teams Do Well in Latest Pitch Contests

Last week there were two important pitch contests for cleantech companies and three of our local ones competed.  On October 22, judging was done for CalSEED prototype grants of $450,000.  Empow Lighting (a clever LED replacement panel for fluorescents in existing luminaires) and Stasis Group (a cold storage device placed downstream of a building roof-top air conditioner to reduce peak loads) were among 9 companies that presented.  Results won’t be announced until after the first of the year, but likely 5 or 6 will be selected to receive the grant. Fingers crossed!

On the second contest, we do know we have a local winner.  On October 23, judging for the CleanTech Open West selected 6 companies out of 30 contestants to advance to the national finals.  RePurpose Energy (re-using EV batteries for stationary storage) won the award for most significant potential impact.  Way to go, Ryan Barr and team! They will be heading to USC in November for the finals to compete for significant prize money.  

CalSEED and Cleantech Open are now leading ways for funding your early stage startup in that difficult period after friends and family have chipped-in and private investors are not ready to write a check.  The next cycle on both routes for 2020 are about to begin, so be on the lookout for more info on when the application periods are open. We can help you with that.

Thomas Hall

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gary Simon is the Chair of CleanStarts Board. A seasoned energy executive and entrepreneur with 45 years of experience in business, government, and non-profits.

CleanStart Sponsors

Weintraub | Tobin, EY, Stoel Rives, Greenberg Traurig LLP

BlueTech Valley, Buchalter, Moss Adams, PowerSoft.biz

College of Engineering & Computer Science at Sacramento State

CVIE Forum Showcases New Companies

CVIE Forum Showcases New Companies

I recently had the pleasure to go to an event hosted by our partners at Fresno State’s Wet Center and BlueTech Valley.  The Central Valley Innovation and Entrepreneurship Forum an event that people need to check out.  In its fourth year, this was a hidden gem, featuring over 30 startups with some really cool ideas and speakers sharing their experience and knowledge around entrepreneurship.

Tabling there were familiar faces from the past year, such as Scarlet Solar and Waterhound Futures who were in our Crash Course, along with RAF Electronics, California Sunlight, and ECO2MIX who attended out Central Valley Clean Tech Showcase. 

I also got to check out coll new companies from the valley like Precision XYZ who use drones to troubleshoot solar and HyperBorean who used waste heat to cool just like Professor Ramoni described at the recent Cleantech Meetup.

It was a great event that featured break-out sessions and a pitch competition with Ecoli Sense winning the main $10,000 prize.  Additionally, Get Served Transportation, an uber like app to support handicap people won the “peoples investment”, a $2,500 prize. Get Served Transportation convinced attendees to invest in them with Fresno State Themed Bulldon Dollars that were handed out upon arrival.  

 Check out the Video and make sure to attend in 2020.

Thomas Hall

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Thomas is the Executive Director of CleanStart. Thomas has a strong background in supporting small businesses, leadership, financial management and is proficient in working with nonprofits. He has a BS in Finance and a BA in Economics from California State University, Chico. Thomas has a passion for sustainability and a commitment to supporting non-profits in the region.

CleanStart Sponsors

Weintraub | Tobin, Moss Adams, River City Bank, GreenbergTraurig

BlueTech Valley, PowerSoft.biz, Revrnt, Synbyo, Califronia Mobility Center

Building Energy Management—The Real World

Building Energy Management—The Real World

Thursday Oct. 24, we had a full house at Hacker Lab to hear three very interesting talks on building energy management in the real world vs. what we think is going on.  

 Kristin Heinemeier of Frontier Energy hit us with the reality that few of the fancy energy-saving HVAC systems installed over the past decades are being allowed to operate as they should.  The culprit? “Wire cutters”, as she put it. Building tenants or even the building operators at some point on most buildings become disenchanted with how the system is working and do something to defeat it.  No system in the world can stand up against someone with wire cutters to defeat it. She had pictures of equipment where someone had jammed something into the dampers supposed to bring in cool outside air when the temperature is right and then close when it’s hot to recirculate inside air.  In one photo, someone in fact used the air-damper control box, ripped off the wall, to jam open the dampers. Other examples were seeing systems totally unplugged, so no energy savings were being generated at all. Why? Because people did not know how to readjust the system properly to provide the comfort levels they wanted.  What happened to the operators trained by the installers when the systems were first put in? They work somewhere else now and did not train their replacements adequately. This creates a huge opportunity for Frontier to audit existing buildings, get the systems operating again, and deal with whatever the comfort issues were that led occupants to take things into their own hands.  

 Zach Denning took it one step further.  His company installs an autonomous AI-based virtual engineer (“Hank”) to learn the systems in the building, understand the comfort and other occupant requirements, and then tweak the existing systems to achieve those targets.  Zach confirmed that they often have to reconnect the installed systems on a building to get a useful starting point. But his idea is to let “Hank” do the tweaking, rather than depending on a rookie building engineer getting trained well.  Zach and his team can interface with almost any brand of system installed on a building and work with it. That’s an enormous savings over a building manager installing all new equipment, assuming the problem is that the existing equipment is defective.  Zach’s insight is that it is not the equipment but the humans “tweaking” the system in the wrong way. Hank takes that problem away. Usually the energy savings are 40+%. That’s a lot of money compared to the monthly fee for Hank, running as a SaaS platform. 

 Zach is getting good traction with customers and has recently raised a $250K round to keep up his momentum.  He is currently generating revenue.

 The third presentation of the evening was from Prof. Marcus Romani of the Mechanical Engineering Department at Sac State.  His talk was on advances in using solar to provide air conditioning in buildings, not through running an electric motor-driven vapor compression system (the kind most people have), but through using the sun’s heat directly to run an absorption cooling cycle.  The idea is not new, but recent advances are making it more economical. The principal advance is in the efficiency of the solar heating panels that drive the system. Absorption cooling is how most ice houses and refrigerators worked originally. It involves using heat to boil a chemical solution to drive off a certain ingredient, and then letting that ingredient re-dissolve in another part of the system, which creates cooling.  Early devices used ammonia in an aqueous solution. Modern devices use more complicated chemical stews to improve efficiency. Prof. Romani’s point is that buildings seeking zero net energy status but not having enough roof space to install PV panels to offset all electric use, may be able to eliminate all electric use for A/C by switching to absorption cooling. Solar thermal collectors can capture more of the sun’s energy than a PV panel.

 All three presentations captured the full attention of the crowd.  There is much more to discuss about startups targeting building energy management and we are sure to bring this topic back in future MeetUps.  

 Our next MeetUp is set for Thursday, December 5, at the Hacker Lab from 5:30-8:00 pm.  Save the date and look for the announcement of the speakers. This will be our last MeetUp for the year, so don’t miss it!

Thomas Hall, Executive Director, kicks off meetup.

Zach Denning introuduces us to “Hank”, an autonomous AI-based virtual engineer who learns the systems in the building.

Prof. Marcus Romani of the Mechanical Engineering Department at Sac State talks on advances in using solar to provide air conditioning in buildings.

Thomas Hall

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gary Simon is the Chair of CleanStarts Board. A seasoned energy executive and entrepreneur with 45 years of experience in business, government, and non-profits.

CleanStart Sponsors

Weintraub | Tobin, EY, Stoel Rives, Greenberg Traurig LLP

BlueTech Valley, Buchalter, Moss Adams, PowerSoft.biz

College of Engineering & Computer Science at Sacramento State

Clean Tech Stocks Having a Great Year So Far

Clean Tech Stocks Having a Great Year So Far

Check out two recent articles provide more detail.  One is from Ron Pernick at Clean Edge. The other is from Timothy Smith at Investopedia.

Results for the major clean tech stock indexes are blowing away the S&P 500.  All of the four major indexes outperformed the S&P 500 in the past 12 months, but the wind index did not quite keep up on a YTD basis.  In the following table, note that IXE is a fund with more conventional energy companies in it. It did not do well.

As of September 30, 2019 CELS (U.S. Clean Energy) GWE (Global Wind) HHO (U.S. Water)  QGRD (Global Grid) S&P 500 IXE (Energy Select)
QTD 1.52% -1.15% 2.79% 2.99% 1.70% -6.21%
YTD 22.34% 17.42% 28.90% 29.40% 20.55% 6.10%
12 Months 10.20% 8.45% 11.87% 6.46% 4.25% -19.01%

 

Here are the best and worst performers among individual stocks.  Among the top 10 is Northern California-based Enphase Energy.

Best Worst
SolarEdge Technologies Inc. 34.0% Bloom Energy Corp. -73.5%
Eolus Vind AB 31.8% NIO Inc. -38.8%
Gurit Holding AG 27.6% JinkoSolar Holding Company Limited -26.5%
TerraForm Power, Inc. 27.4% TPI Composites, Inc. -24.2%
RWE AG 27.1% Nordex SE -21.0%
MasTec, Inc. 26.0% Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, S.A.  -18.4%
SIF Holding NV 24.4% BYD Company Limited -17.2%
The York Water Company 22.2% MYR Group Inc. -16.2%
Enphase Energy Inc. 21.9% American Superconductor Corp. -15.5%
Ballard Power Systems Inc. 19.9% General Electric Company -14.9

Check out two recent articles provide more detail.  One is from Ron Pernick at Clean Edge. The other is from Timothy Smith at Investopedia.

Thomas Hall

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gary Simon is the Chair of CleanStarts Board. A seasoned energy executive and entrepreneur with 45 years of experience in business, government, and non-profits.

CleanStart Sponsors

Weintraub | Tobin, EY, Stoel Rives, Greenberg Traurig LLP

BlueTech Valley, Buchalter, Moss Adams, PowerSoft.biz

College of Engineering & Computer Science at Sacramento State