Nine of the world’s best late-stage energy startups will this month join the second cohort of EnergyLab’s Scaleup Program, delivered in partnership with TransGrid and Endeavour Energy. Offering a unique opportunity for startups to collaborate with ANZ’s most innovative utilities, investors and founders, the program will help the nine companies selected to participate unlock their next wave of growth.
EnergyLab’s Scaleup Program was launched last year after being built collaboratively with Australian utilities and startups. The program is industry-led; sponsored this year by TransGrid and Endeavour Energy, two of the nation’s biggest energy utilities. Between them, TransGrid and Endeavour Energy operate a sizeable portion of the electricity infrastructure across NSW and the ACT, with TransGrid managing the high voltage electricity transmission network and Endeavour Energy supplying electricity to 2.5 million people across Sydney's Greater West, Blue Mountains, Southern Highlands, the Illawarra and the South Coast regions.
In selecting this year’s Scaleup Program cohort, EnergyLab worked with TransGrid and Endeavour Energy to identify their priority areas and recruited startups from across the world that could help them unlock new opportunities to save customers money and speed the transition to a low carbon future.
Through the program, the selected startups will deepen their relationships with TransGrid and Endeavour Energy, meet some of ANZ’s most active clean energy investors and have opportunities to connect with EnergyLab’s Innovation Partners. These Innovation Partners represent the most innovative utilities in Australia and Zealand and include the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), Aurora Energy, Counties Power, CS Energy, FRV, Hydro Tasmania, Nectr, PowerNet, Scanpower, Synergy, TasNetworks and Yurika.
The 2021 Scaleup Program cohort represents a diverse global mix of startups that work with energy utilities to innovate across their businesses, from asset management and network operations to grid modernisation. From data integrity (Aperio Systems), augmented reality (V-Labs) and electrical safety (Proxxi) to critical infrastructure digital twins (Neara) and distributed energy resource aggregation (Shifted Energy), these startups represent the best in innovative technologies across the energy sector.
The program’s secret sauce is the chance for members of its cohorts to build relationships with each other, with one-third of the first cohort collaborating formally together. With companies participating from as far away as Hawaii and Switzerland, EnergyLab is excited to see the partnerships that will form between the cohort’s local and international startups.
EnergyLab Chair Piers Grove said in a statement, “We’re really excited about this global cohort and the opportunity to help them grow through new access to Australian and New Zealand markets. In the age of COVID-19, especially, we’re proud to give Australian utilities access to the best local and overseas energy startups while other, more traditional means of collaboration and expansion remain disrupted.
With TransGrid and Endeavour Energy as program partners, we also have a unique opportunity to promote innovation and help advance the uptake of renewable technologies in the energy sector. Ensuring our electricity transmission and distribution networks innovate to integrate additional renewable energy generation is absolutely key to enabling the sector’s transition to net zero and customers' access to affordable clean energy.”
Eva Hanly, TransGrid’s Executive Manager Strategy, Innovation and Technology stated “We’re thrilled to be supporting the EnergyLab Scaleup Program and the exciting cohort of scale-up companies taking part. We’re looking forward to offering them the opportunity to work with us and to develop innovative solutions together. The companies in the cohort have a lot to offer the energy sector and we’re proud to be supporting them.”
From the startup cohort, Electron’s CEO Jo-Jo Hubbard said “We are excited by the extent of Endeavour Energy's ambition and vision to engage consumer devices to optimise network capacity and renewable generation. We look forward to leveraging our platform, ElectronConnect, to support them in delivering a resilient, cost efficient, zero carbon grid."
Australian startup Neara’s CCO Jack Curtis added "We are thrilled to be included in the EnergyLab Scaleup Program, particularly given its focus on enabling companies like Neara to access significant new growth opportunities. We are excited by the prospect of collaborating with TransGrid, especially in light of their progressive innovation agenda, and our belief that Neara's digital twin software platform can greatly enable TransGrid's ambitions"
Forest Frizzell, Shifted Energy’s CEO said “We are thrilled to be making a Hawaii to Australia connection working with Endeavour Energy and EnergyLab to gain experience and explore scalable solutions for consumer engagement and grid support through monitoring and aggregation of Distributed Energy Resources like water heaters. Expanding the capabilities of Shifted Energy's Grid Maestro platform in the Australian market is very exciting and we see a ton of alignment of our capabilities and the decarbonisation goals of Australia.”
Each of the nine startups selected to join EnergyLab’s 2021 Scaleup Program cohort are listed below:
Aperio (USA, Israel) - Aperio's Industrial Data Integrity software automatically validates operational data at scale to improve data accuracy, allowing for better operational and business decisions based on real-time, trusted, reliable data.
Camus Energy (USA) - Camus Energy provides cloud-scale grid management software as a service for utilities and energy providers to enable the transition to a zero-carbon future.
Electron (UK) - Electron enables network utilities to launch and operate local energy markets to optimise the combined use of network capacity and renewable generation.
Neara (Australia) - Neara creates engineering-grade digital twins of critical infrastructure, bringing organisations closer to their assets, environment, and business.
Overstory (Netherlands) - Real-time vegetation intelligence, at scale.
Proxxi (Canada) - Wearable technology and data to protect workers from electrical injury before they come in contact.
Shifted Energy (USA) - Shifted Energy develops and deploys industry leading distributed energy resource aggregation software and IoT-connected load controls to help utilities create and rapidly scale demand side management programs.
V-Labs (Switzerland) - V-Labs provides an innovative augmented reality solution for AR-glasses that can visualize, modify and acquire geospatial data with cm accuracy. In combination with their feature for step-by-step work instructions, V-Labs has developed a powerful tool for surveyors, engineers and contractors to increase their efficiency, verify engineering plans and avoid errors during construction.
Zaphiro Technologies (Switzerland) - Zaphiro helps power utilities to increase the resiliency and reliability of their power grids in order to prepare them for the upcoming clean energy transition.
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