ACEP researchers help energy startups
CalWave's wave energy converter deployed offshore near Scripps Institute of Oceanography in Sand Diego.
Dec. 1, 2021
Michelle Wilber, Chris Pike and Eloise Brown, with UAF's Alaska Center for Energy and Power, recently served as panelists for the second session of Launch Alaska's 2021 Tech Deployment Track.
Launch Alaska, a nonprofit accelerator with funding from the Office of Naval Research and the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Technology Transitions, works with companies from Alaska and across the world to support deployment of innovative climate tech in Alaska.
Tech Deployment Track is an eight-month program that assists companies focused on food, water, transportation and energy, as they explore customer relationships in Alaska. As part of their role as panelists in the program, ACEP researchers agreed to mentor several companies with promising technologies in renewable energy that are interested in finding markets in Alaska.
Wilber and Pike, from ACEP’s Solar Technologies Program, mentored FimusKraft, a Finnish biowaste-to-energy company. Pike also mentored Radiant, a startup developing modular nuclear microreactors. Wilber helped to mentor ColdHubs, a Nigerian company that uses solar and phase change materials to run its coolers and freezers completely off grid, and Camus Energy, a software-as-a-service company that helps utilities see and make the most of the distributed resources on their grid.
Brown, from ACEP’s Pacific Marine Energy Center, helped mentor several manufacturers of wave energy converters and river energy converters, collectively known as marine energy. CalWave is a company from California with a WEC that is being tested offshore at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and at PACWave, Oregon State University's offshore wave energy test site. CorPower Ocean is a Swedish company with a commercial-scale WEC in Portugal that will be incorporated into an array of WECs at this site. Arrecife is a Spanish company with a marine energy converter that produces energy from both waves and rivers that could potentially power a small cabin off the grid or a community microgrid.
For more information on the mentorship, please contact Michelle Wilber at mmwilber@alaska.edu, and learn more about the Launch Alaska Tech Deployment Track here.