Congratulations Waterhound Futures and VerifiH20!

Congratulations Waterhound Futures and VerifiH20!

Jan 27, 2020

Congratulations to Waterhound Futures and Verifi H2O, who both took the top prizes at The Water Council’s Tech Challenge.  Both completed CleanStart’s CEO Crash Course last fall.

Both got recognized for being leaders innovating water technology claiming the top prize money.  The recognition is well deserved.   

 

Full Press Release:

A. O. SMITH CORPORATION, BADGER METER AND ZURN INDUSTRIES SELECT TWO OUTSTANDING WATER TECHNOLOGY INNOVATIONS AMONG 22 APPLICATIONS FROM NINE COUNTRIES

MILWAUKEE, Wis. (January 27, 2020) – The Water Council, with its supporting corporate sponsors, has announced the winners for the second round of the Tech Challenge. This round focused on Innovative solutions for inline sensors that detect water quality parameters and artificial intelligence for pipe networks and systems. 

The Tech Challenge program augments corporate open innovation channels and identifies emerging freshwater technologies and ideas with a high potential for commercialization. Throughout the year, several topics of interest are identified by corporate sponsors, which are then posted as open Tech Challenges and promoted globally. Selected finalists have an opportunity to meet in-person with sponsors for a chance to win prize money, gain access to corporate R&D resources and potentially partner with a corporate sponsor on the development of the technology or idea. 

“This round attracted 22 applications from nine countries, of which 80 percent weren’t already on the radar for our sponsor companies,” said Karen Frost, vice president of economic development at The Water Council. “That is exactly what the Tech Challenge is designed to do for our sponsors – build pipeline.” The innovations chosen as Tech Challenge winners are: 

Verifi H2O – An innovative water-monitoring platform delivering real-time water quality surveillance systems based on proprietary, advanced material technologies that rapidly detect pathogens and other contaminants, while providing customers with reliable information to make time-sensitive decisions. 

Waterhound Futures – A predictive modelling and analytics solution, which simulates water and wastewater treatment plants to provide actionable insight to operators, engineers and management. 

Commenting on the value of the program, “Badger Meter owes its success to a long history of water technology innovation,” noted Dan Fellers, manager, research & development at Badger Meter. “We are confident the quality and diversity of ideas that flow from the Tech Challenge will help fuel the solutions of tomorrow.” 

The Tech Challenge is designed to build additional pathways for corporate R&D teams beyond conventional channels. Rebecca Tallon, engineering director – water treatment at A. O. Smith Corporation, adds, “Our participation in the program widens our access to innovators who have ideas but haven’t explored marketing their solutions through traditional channels yet, so it’s been a valuable way to extend our R&D efforts for innovations that would have taken much longer to find on our own.” 

In addition to augmenting R&D pathways, the Tech Challenge program also drives deal flow opportunities in targeted topics of interest. “AI is an emerging topic, so we’re interested in innovations in that specific area as part of our connected products strategy,” said Glen Trickle, director of engineering at Zurn. “This Challenge, we were pleasantly surprised by the volume of qualified AI applications, along with other solutions that we’re continuing to explore.” 

Tech Challenge applications were accepted from Sept. 6 – Nov. 3, 2019. The next round of Tech Challenge topics will be announced March 2020. 

About A. O. Smith
A. O. Smith Corporation, with headquarters in Milwaukee, Wis., is a global leader applying innovative technology and energy-efficient solutions to products manufactured and marketed worldwide. The company is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of residential and commercial water heating equipment and boilers, as well as a leading manufacturer of water treatment products.

About Badger Meter
Badger Meter is a leading innovator, manufacturer and marketer of flow measurement and control products, serving water and gas utilities, municipalities and industrial customers worldwide. Measuring a variety of liquids — from water to oil and lubricants in commercial processes — products from Badger Meter are known for accuracy, durability and the ability to provide valuable and timely measurement information. For more information, visit www.badgermeter.com.

About Zurn Industries
Zurn Industries, LLC, a Rexnord company, is a recognized leader in commercial, municipal, healthcare and industrial markets. Zurn offers the largest breadth of engineered water solutions, including a wide spectrum of sustainable plumbing products. Zurn delivers total building solutions for new construction and retrofit applications that enhance any building’s environment. For more information, visit Zurn.com or RexnordCorp.com.

About The Water Council
Headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA next to the world’s largest freshwater system and home to one of the most influential freshwater technology hubs in the world, The Water Council (TWC) is recognized as a global center for advancing water technologies and stewardship. At its heart, TWC is a non-profit, membership organization that connects, convenes and showcases the hub comprised of more than 238 water technology businesses and the diverse water leadership network of 200 members it is linked to from around the world. While TWC’s mission is centered on driving economic development, attracting and connecting world-class talent and supporting water-focused technology innovation, its larger goal is to help secure freshwater resources for the world by driving solutions to the numerous industries that need and use a large amount of water. Learn more by visiting www.thewatercouncil.com.

Local Startup Empow Lighting among 6 to get Phase 2 CalSEED awards

Local Startup Empow Lighting among 6 to get Phase 2 CalSEED awards

Jan 23, 2020

Congratulations to Sergey Vasilyev and his team for a big win for Empow and its CoreGlo LED replacement product for existing fluorescent luminaires.  Empow is the first company in our region to advance to Phase 2.

Nice win! If you want more details on this product, Sergey was one of the presenters at our December 4 Connex Investor Night and we have a video of it on our Youtube Channel.  Maxout Renewables from Livermore was another winner, and we have a video of them at the same event. Other winners were Stasis Group, In-Pipe Energy, GenH and SkyCool Systems.  We hope to have some of these at our future Connex events. Watch for the announcements.

The CalSEED Press Release on the awards can be viewed here.

Creating a Startup? Why You Should Attend the CleanStart Customer Discovery Workshop

Creating a Startup? Why You Should Attend the CleanStart Customer Discovery Workshop

Jan 20, 2020

What is the most important factor in successfully pitching for investment?  Having some proof you have customers interested in your product. Most startups skip over this step and go to investors unprepared.  Why is this a bad idea? Here are some radical thoughts that will be discussed in our workshop:

  1. Most investor firms want startups to focus quickly on a product launch date and scale up.  This is deadly advice. Ignore it. It leads to early bankruptcy if the startup has not discovered who their customers are and what they want.

     

  2. There’s only one reason for a business plan:  Some investor who went to business school doesn’t know any better and wants to see one.  Startups get focused on doing a business plan too soon. Once the business plan is delivered it is fundamentally useless at best and dangerous at worst.

     

  3. A startup is not a small version of a big company.  What works for product development at a big company will not work in a small company.

     

  4. Unlike existing companies, startups go from failure to failure.  That’s not bad if (1) one learns from failure, and (2) the failures are not expensive.  The only way for a startup to find a good path is try lots of experiments and take a lot of wrong turns.  Failure is a part of the process. The key is not to waste a lot of time and cash on the experiments. They have to be done on the cheap and done fast.

     

  5. A startup is a faith-based enterprise built on its founder’s vision and a notable absence of facts.  The founder’s job is to translate this vision and assumptions into facts. Founders can’t do this by huddling at their desks.  They have to get out of the building and go see customers.

     

  6. Market research firms are great at predicting the past and coloring their conclusions to fit what they think clients want to hear.  They are no substitute for a founder’s getting out and testing ideas with actual customers in person.

Customer Discovery and Product-Market Fit Workshop

Where:

Hacker Lab

When:

9:30 AM January 28th

and

6:00 PM February 4th

Register Now!

Intrigued?  Then sign up for the workshop either January 28 from 6-8:30 pm or February 4 from 9:30 to noon at Hacker Lab (2533 R Street).  A $20 donation is requested, but don’t let that be a barrier. If you are serious about creating a startup, you need to come regardless.  

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

January 2020 Newsletter

2020 Predictions

Jan 7, 2020

Since I went 4.5  for 10 last year I felt I needed to return to my terot cards take another shot at ten fearless predictions for the coming year.  We will revisit these at the end of the year to see how we did.  If you have some insights or questions, let us know at Info@cleanstart.org and we will include those in a future newsletter.

    1. The momentum for the “hydrogen highway” will stall out.  Battery electric vehicles are proving to be superior to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in almost every way.  As a result, sales of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are lagging expectations and hydrogen sales have grown slowly.  About 152,000 battery electric and plug-in hybrids were sold in the state in 2019, compared to about 1500 fuel cell electrics.  Only 8 FCEVs were sold in the last quarter of 2018 in our ten-county region. Probably fewer than 30 were sold here in all of 2019.  The total registrations for FCEVs in the state stands at about 6,000 at year-end, while the total for battery and plug-in electrics is about 616,000.  (Exact data as of end of 2018 are 248,332 battery electrics, 216,042 plug-in hybrids, and 5,391 FCEVs). In 2017, the Air Resources Board projected that there would be 13,400 FCEVs in 2020 and 37,400 by 2023.  At one time, the goal was a million FCEVs by 2030. None of these will be even close to being realized.

      A huge reason is that hydrogen fuel has turned out to be much more expensive than gasoline and particularly more costly than electricity.  Currently, hydrogen is priced at about $12.50 per kg, with equivalent energy to a gallon of gasoline but with a fuel cell double the efficiency of an engine, the equivalent of gasoline is more like $6.25 per gallon.  Stated another way, gasoline costs about 12 cents per mile (at $3.15 per gallon), hydrogen 25 cents, and electricity 6 cents.

      This leads us to make several predictions for 2020: 
      • Sales of FCEVs in our region will fall below 10.
      • The number of hydrogen refueling stations will barely reach 50 statewide (there are 44 now, with 3 in our area).  Governor Brown’s goal was 100 stations by 2020, 200 stations by 2025, and 1000 by 2030. We may never see 100 stations in California.
      • The price of hydrogen locally will not fall below $10 per kilogram.
      • A major auto company will announce it is dropping its FCEV production. 
    2. The number of EV charging stations around Sacramento will exceed 1000.  According to ChargeHub, there are currently 566 charging stations within 15 km of downtown Sacramento.  Of these 478 are Level 2 (220 V) chargers and 88 are Level 3 (480 V, 110 A). We believe the total for this area will exceed 1000 by the end of the year with over 200 being Level 3.  We may also see the first fast chargers go into existing gas stations, an interesting development in itself.  
    3. One more independent EV company in the US will announce it is beginning manufacturing.  The field is getting crowded and one might think some companies would drop out.  They may, but at the same time we think there will be at least one more entrepreneur who will take the plunge. At the same time, we could see some other established car companies announce full battery electric cars this year. 
    4. There will be at least 15 nominees for Sustainable Innovation of the Year.  Stoel Rives and the Sacramento Business Journal will be conducting this contest again in 2020, the fourth year for it.  It has been a good way to highlight the best and brightest in clean tech. The number of companies nominated has been an indicator of interest in sustainability and of the level of activity in the clean tech community.  The first year, there were 16 nominees, but the number has trended down ever since. We believe there has been a surge in bringing innovations to market in our area and that should be reflected in the number of nominees. 
    5. Prices for a ton of carbon emission reduction in 2020 will still not break $20.  It has been rising slowly both in the prompt and futures markets, but the supply of carbon emission reductions has continued to grow, keeping a lid on prices.  The most recent price for carbon allowances for 2021 cleared at $19.53, so maybe next year we will have to take a closer look. 
    6. The installed cost of solar PV will rise modestly.  We were wrong about this one last year.  But with the new requirements for solar on all new homes and the continuation of the tariffs on Chinese panels, we cling to the idea that the cost will be pushed up a few cents from its current $4.50 per kW on homes. 
    7. The revenue generated by our regional clean tech companies will top $6 billion.  The last time we collected this information in late 2018, the total was $5 billion, but we see an upswell in sales success.  Maybe it will result in 20% growth over two years. Wouldn’t that be nice?
    8. A bill will be introduced in California to extend generous subsidies to homeowners to install storage.  The subsidies for PV panels are declining.  There are subsidies for grid-scale storage, but not much for the homeowner.  We expect there will be a move to change this, but it won’t pass. Maybe 2021. 
    9. Two renewable-based microgrids with over 1000 customers each will be established in Northern California.  The power shutoffs of last year are accelerating the interest of communities in creating sections of the grid that can be powered more reliably.  Already, PG&E has trucked-in engine-generators to provide power during shutoffs, but people are demanded cleaner solutions. Some clever communities, whether as part of the CCA movement or separately, are looking at solar, wind, hydro and battery combinations to give them better reliability.  Dozens if not hundreds of communities are having these discussions. There are already about 100 microgrids in the state serving a few large customers each in most cases. The question is whether this will spread to larger aggregations of customers and to the use of renewables. There are many obstacles, so getting two done in 2020 is actually a pretty aggressive prediction.
    10. One cleantech startup in our region will be acquired for a substantial sum.  We know there are several discussions underway.  Just waiting for the shoe to drop.

 Make sure to follow CleanStart this year and see how I do on my predictions.

 

Follow us on Social Media to keep upto date!

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