The Resilient Energy Technology and Infrastructure Consortium recently held a successful Technology Showcase event, which featured a pitch competition and networking session.
RETI, a visionary initiative funded by the National Science Foundation’s Regional Innovation Engines program, brings together the efforts of three regional research universities — West Virginia University, the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University — alongside industrial partners, capital investors, technology accelerators, workforce and community organizations across West Virginia and western Pennsylvania.
RETI’s goal is to create an equitable ecosystem of industrial decarbonization and grid resilience innovation.
The winners of the pitch competition included the following:
$25,000 — Peoples Energy Analytics LLC: This company aims to reduce unpaid energy bills while improving revenue recovery by utilizing data-analytics-as-a-service. By working with utilities, they identify at-risk customers and connect them with assistance programs years before they miss a payment.
$100,000 — FlowCellutions: Focused on grid-scale battery monitoring and diagnostics, CEO and Founder Becca Segel described their product as “The Apple Watch for Grid Batteries.”
$45,000 — SilisiumTech: This company seeks to revolutionize the industry by introducing clean, low-cost, U.S.-based silicon wafer manufacturing, addressing a significant gap in the domestic solar value chain.
$65,000 — Viaduct Innovative: A bench-to-market technology development company specializing in microwave-enhanced thermal applications, Viaduct is focused on electrifying and decentralizing the ammonia-making process, aiming to increase economic returns through enhanced conversion efficiency and unique mobile designs.
$40,000 — Physics Inverted Materials Inc.: Their mission is to reduce the time for materials development from 20 years to five years through digital materials testing, leveraging machine learning technologies to enhance the accuracy and speed of simulations.
$25,000 — Sensible Photonics: This company envisions a world free of catastrophic power equipment failures, producing optical fiber monitoring solutions that detect early-stage failures in grid assets like distribution transformers and energy storage systems.
The networking session, held at the Energy Innovation Center, attracted nearly 100 participants, including representatives from universities, industries, nonprofits and startups from the region.
“This event was a testament to the collaborative spirit and innovative potential in our region,” said Erienne Olesh, executive director of Innovation and Commercialization at WVU and principal investigator on the NSF RETI Engine grant.
“The technologies showcased here demonstrate the vital role that innovation will play in shaping the future of our energy infrastructure.”