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Monday, January 18, 2010
Maine cleantech companies get off on the right foot with MTI grants
By Brendan Lynch
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Following the Clean Energy Council Fellows
MHT's Efrain Viscarolasaga: Preparing the smart grid for more power
It’s about supporting innovation at the grass-roots level. The Maine Technology Institute gives out seed grants to Maine tech companies six times a year, including 14 grants last week, with the goal of helping entrepreneurs turn ideas into companies.
Among other activities, the organization also offers larger development grants and administers the $55 million Maine Technology Bond Fund.
Peter Millet, CEO of Portland software company iSagacity Inc. called the grants, ranging from seed grants of up to $12,500 to development grants of up to $500,000, “very patient capital,” and he and other Maine tech executives said the organization has played a crucial role in the development of their businesses amid the recession.
iSagacity inc.
Millet started his predictive software startup, iSagacity, in California in 2001 and moved it to the Pine Tree State about three years ago after bouncing back and forth between the West Coast and a summer home in Maine. Upon arrival, iSagacity moved into the Maine Center for Economic Development and within two weeks had filed for a seed grant of $10,000. Within three months, iSagacity landed a $290,000 development award from the MTI.
Millett used the funding to develop iSagacity’s product, process data-mining software using an artificial intelligence algorithm licensed from NASA. iSagacity in turn licenses the software to organizations such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which plans to use it to find the baseline chemical composition of U.S. drinking water. Any spikes in the pattern would suggest contamination, either by sabotage or accident.
iSagacity is also working with AthenaEnergy under a $12,500 MTI seed grant awarded late last year to monitor energy use in office buildings. Companies tend to set their automatic light systems and walk away, Millett said, but those systems can degrade over time. iSagacity’s system can detect changes in the baseline energy use and maintain a building’s energy efficiency. Under the grant, the eight-employee iSagacity will be applying the algorithm to an office building in southern Maine.
Ocean Renewable Power Co.
About two-and-a-half years ago, Portland-based Ocean Renewable Power applied for an MTI grant. The company got $300,000 as it was readying its prototype turbine generator unit. In addition to helping fund the prototype, the grant can help make a company more attractive to angel investors. The MTI grant process subjected the company to a degree of due diligence that angel investors don’t have the resources to perform, according to CEO Christopher Sauer.
“It’s kind of an independent verification that we’re not crazy,” Sauer said.
In 2008, the company got another shot of MTI funding, this time about $210,000. Ocean Renewable Power used that funding to demonstrate the viability of its technology, Sauer said. Now the company is beta-testing its turbine generators using $806,000 administered by the MTI through a $55 million bond bill passed by Maine voters in 2007. By the end of the month, Ocean Renewable Power is putting a version of its product — a barge with wind turbines on it — in Cobb’s Cook Bay in Eastport. By the end of the year, the company plans to have its commercial product — a larger version of the same barge, connected to the grid — in the water.
Ocean Renewable Power was founded in Florida about five years ago, focused on using the Florida Gulf Stream. When it switched its focus toward tidal, Maine and Alaska — the states with the best tidal-power resources — were the natural destinations. When it officially moved its headquarters to Portland two years ago, the MTI’s presence influenced the decision, Sauer said. Florida didn’t have the same available funding for, or interest in, renewables, Sauer said.
Between the company’s prototype and beta-test phases, it ran into some cash-flow problems, Sauer said. Ocean Renewable, which has grown from four to 17 employees, got a $150,000 working-capital loan, which it matched, from the MTI.
“They have a knack for understanding that at certain key times, it doesn’t take millons and millions,” Sauer said.
EOS Solar
In September, EOS Solar received an $11,000 seed grant from the MTI to beta test and patent its manifold product for solar installations, according to Steven Stinson, sales and marketing director of Rockland, Maine-based EOS Solar. Since then, EOS has used some of the grant to partner with the University of Maine to determine whether its product, a bundle of the components necessary for a solar installation, is eligible for patent coverage.
The students found the manifold was likely not patentable — under new, more stringent patent regulations, bundles of other technologies must have an unexpected outcome, Stinson said.
“They told us it was the most complicated research they’d ever done,” he said. “I figured we’d be OK.”
EOS is still trying to determine with finality, whether its technology is patentable, this time with IP lawyers. Without the funding from the MTI, none of that process would be possible. The company has also applied for another grant from MTI, but Stinson wouldn’t discuss details of the proposal.
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