Smart grid project spawns energy-storage startup

When the Software Association of Oregon and the Open Technology Business Center kicked off their Smart Grid Startup Project program last year, the groups were trying to get ahead of a trend they saw building in the industry — but the folks involved weren’t entirely sure what was going to come out of it.

They’ve been pleasantly surprised. Of the 40 attendees who signed up for the first three-session series, three teams gelled around startup ideas. Of those, one has incorporated, published a white paper and is going after funding for its energy storage startup.

“We expect to see more happening around the smart grid,” said Bryce Yonker, membership director for the SAO. “It’s right in the wheelhouse of where the region’s expertise is.”

James Mater, the Portland-based co-founder and director of Quality Logic, an engineering and testing company in California that’s doing work in the smart grid industry, got involved in the startup project’s efforts to address two concerns that he holds about Oregon:

° That the state doesn’t understand the smart grid trend; and ° that the state has a poor track record when it comes to holding on to companies until they grow to maturity.

Mater leads the steering committee that’s working with the startups coming out of the project, including Supercritical Storage LLC, the first to incorporate.

Dan Nicollet, Lisa Nevitt and Tom Barquinero, the team behind Supercritical Storage, are working to hit a few key milestones for the nascent company, including the validation of its key technology, which uses compressed carbon for scalable and cheap energy storage. Energy storage is key to a smart grid that relies on intermittent renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power.

Nicollet said that in some ways the team was not expecting to come out of the project with a businesses plan, but the opportunity was too great to pass up.

“One of the blessings in disguise was the economic slump,” Nicollet said. “The quality of the people who came together for this project and who were on the steering committee were amazing. That wouldn’t have happened in another economic time.”