Ashland’s Dominion Energy Innovation Center has unveiled the 15 companies participating in three different tracks of its expanded accelerator program for 2024.
This year’s accelerator includes the DEIC Accelerate track, which is for utility deployment companies, and another track called Hyperscaled, which is focused on utilities and data center startups. The third track, called Precursor, is a “pre-accelerator” focused on earlier stage companies. Five companies have been selected for each track.
All three tracks will run simultaneously from early September through November. The participating companies will receive 11 weeks of education and mentorship and develop business pilot opportunities with the innovation center’s partner companies, including Dominion Energy and QTS Data Centers.
The participating companies include:
Accelerate cohort
- GH Power, based in Hamilton, Ontario, is a clean energy technology startup that builds and operates energy reactors that optimize the delivery of decarbonized products to the utility, oil and gas and semiconductor and electronics industries.
- Heat Inverse, from Ithaca, New York, created a patent-pending passive cooling film that can be applied to any outdoor surface to reverse heat absorption and cool with no added power or moving parts.
- Latimer Controls Inc., a Boulder, Colorado-based startup, provides machine learning-powered control software for utility-scale solar assets.
- Okovate Sustainable Energy, based in D.C., designs and develops derisked community solar projects that work in harmony with crop-farming practices, ensuring land access and profitability for farmers, while decreasing costs for solar asset owners.
- Power Up Connect, headquartered in Baltimore, is a longtime manufacturer of charging solutions now focused on building portable power solutions.
Hyperscaled cohort
- Bedrock Energy is an Austin, Texas, company aimed at making geothermal energy for heating and cooling more accessible.
- Expand Power, based in San Francisco, offers a transformer that can expand urban electrification and enable a more resilient grid.
- Granular Energy is a London-based software provider that specializes in clean energy management solutions for utilities and retail energy suppliers.
- GridBeyond, located in Dublin with a U.S. headquarters in Austin, Texas, uses AI technology to bridge the gap between energy markets, asset owners and consumers.
- Veir, is a Woburn, Massachusetts, startup developing a high temperature superconductor-based transmission lines using evaporative cooling architecture.
Precursor cohort
- Aura Energy is a Richmond-based startup focused on engineering state-of-the-art low-voltage power distribution equipment for mission-critical markets.
- Ashlawn Energy, based in Springfield, has created a rechargeable battery system for buildings that stores energy from electrical sources and discharges power as needed.
- CarbonPivot, located in D.C., works to alert residential and commercial customers of the carbon footprint of their energy use at a given moment.
- C-Crete Technologies is a materials science company based out of San Leandro, California, focused on infrastructure materials with an ultra-low or negative CO2 footprint.
- FisherH2O, from Richmond, has developed water purification technology that combines electromagnetism and electrolysis.
The DEIC was founded in 2009 as a public-private partnership between Activation Capital, Dominion Energy, the town of Ashland and Hanover County. The organization has a coworking space and at that time worked with companies in a variety of sectors. In 2020, the DEIC decided to focus on energy sector startups and created an accelerator program that helps Dominion identify promising startups in the energy sector.
“Our goal with each of these programs is to identify and support startups that can help Virginia’s energy landscape thrive,” DEIC Executive Director Adam Sledd said in a statement. “Each of the selected companies has the potential to help Virginia achieve a net-zero carbon economy.”
