Windows that warm buildings when it’s cold outside. Personal power wind turbines that provide electricity in remote areas. Drones don’t need human intervention for months because they sense when the battery needs to be recharged and head back to the charging station.
These are some of the innovations to be presented by regional entrepreneurs at the 2014 TransTech Energy Business Development Conference, Nov. 12-13, at the Waterfront Place Hotel.
Reminiscent of the popular TV show Shark Tank, the TransTech Energy Conference—brainchild of West Virginia University faculty member Carl Irwin—seeks to connect energy innovators with potential investors and strategic partners.
Irwin is a mathematics professor at WVU and an integral member of WVU’s National Research Center for Coal and Energy. His passion is environmentally friendly energy sources, which helped drive his idea for the conference: technologies that work to make traditional energy sources cleaner and more efficient, promote affordable renewable energy, or lead to products and manufacturing processes that use less energy overall qualify as TransTech Energy concepts.
“Over the years, I had seen and heard lots of good ideas for improving energy and manufacturing systems from our own faculty at WVU and from other researchers and inventors I’ve met,” said Irwin. “I worried that these great ideas would just sit on the shelf and never be deployed in the real world to create jobs, improve the environment and add downstream value to our natural resource base.”
Irwin drew inspiration for TransTech from the Industry Growth Forum, organized by the United States Department of Energy National Renewable Energy Laboratory. He started attending the event in 2008 and saw potential in the model as a way to help entrepreneurs get their innovations on the market.
“This model struck me as a way to encourage commercialization of energy innovation in states like West Virginia, except we would have to broaden the scope from renewables to include technologies that help us transition to a low-carbon, competitive, sustainable economy of the future – hence the term TransTech Energy,” Irwin said.
Since 2003, companies making a pitch at the Industry Growth Forum have raised more than $4 billion in growth funding, which Irwin hopes can be mirrored in the WVU TransTech Energy conferences.
This is the third year for the TransTech Conference. Irwin and his team have invited 23 entrepreneurs from a pool of 30 applicants to present 8-minute pitches to panels of experts who will decide which of them merit awards.
“It’s not just about the awards for great pitches,” said Irwin, “the real payoff for a start-up company is when an investor says, ‘Hey, I like what you’re doing, let’s talk some more.’”
But the event is for more than just inventors.
“You don’t have to have a start-up company to get some benefit from attending the conference,” said Irwin. “If you’re wondering what entrepreneurship is all about, if you’re wondering how we can improve upon our traditional energy systems, if you’re looking for a start-up to invest in, this is a great event for you.”
This year, eight of the presentations will be by West Virginia-based entrepreneurs. Other presenters hail from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, Maryland and Michigan. Their projects cover a variety of industry sectors including electricity generation and transmission, engines, water purification, plastics, batteries, coatings, glass, and sensors for industrial, commercial, and residential settings.
WVU President Gordon Gee will be on hand to introduce keynote dinner presenter, former University of Kentucky President and veteran entrepreneur Lee Todd. Other featured conference speakers include U.S. Department of Energy National Energy Technology Laboratory Director Grace Bochenek, U.S. DOE Advanced Manufacturing Office Director Mark Johnson, and U.S. DOE ARPA-E Interim Director Cheryl Martin.
Irwin said that most all of the 36 presenters from the first two TransTech Conferences are doing well and are benefitting from contacts with investors, partners and customers that were made at the TransTech Conferences. Three TransTech alumni companies that have made significant progress are returning in 2014 to make new pitches.
Learn more at http://transtechenergy.org/. Registration is available online and at the door.
-WVU-
tkw 11/07/14
CONTACT: Carl Irwin, National Research Center for Coal and Energy
304.293.7318, Carl.Irwin@mail.wvu.edu
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