The Midwest Energy Research Consortium, the Milwaukee-based organization promoting research and innovation in energy power and controls in the Midwest, is hosting a Demo Day on March 3 for startups graduating from its WERCBench Labs Accelerator program.
This year marks the fifth anniversary of the accelerator. Since 2015, 30 startups have graduated from the 16-week accelerator in Milwaukee. Each startup selected for the accelerator receives up to $40,000 in grants and royalty-based financing.
Past graduates include Madison’s C-Motive, the maker of lightweight motors that run on electrostatic technology, and Blue Line Battery, the Whitewater company co-founded by 2019 Wisconsin Inno Under 25 honoree Ben Breitenbucher that engineers and manufactures industrial lithium-ion battery systems.
Demo Day is the culmination of the accelerator and features a $10,000 top prize. Here are the startups that will pitch their business models:
Elektrifi: Elektrifi is an early-stage startup spun out from the University of Wisconsin-Madison that’s developing small-scale smart microgrids that can be easily and quickly deployed for immediate disaster relief.
Mesodyne: Massachusetts company Mesodyne has developed generators that silently and efficiently convert any fuel to electricity in a portable form factor, increasing runtime 10-times over batteries alone.
Omega Grid: Chicago company Omega Grid developed a low-cost blockchain-based transactional platform to help cities lower their electric bills by paying their citizens and businesses to use less electricity when prices are high and more electricity when prices are very low.
Steam Energy Labs: Canada’s Steam Energy Labs has created a learning thermostat for domestic electric residential water heaters.
The Demo Day takes place inside M-WERC’s new Energy Innovation Center at 4201 N. 27th Street in Milwaukee. You can find more information on the event here.
