NY startup aims to take on Tesla’s Powerwall
Date: Feb 29, 2019
Italian entrepreneurs who migrated to Stony Brook University’s energy incubator to form an innovative-battery startup are planning to take on the Powerwall of Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc.
Their Stony Brook company, StorEn Technologies, is adapting vanadium-flow batteries — typically the size of shipping containers and found in utility or industrial settings — for light commercial or household use.
StorEn’s battery units, about the size of a large, cylindrical vending machine, could be used as a backup in case of a power outage.
Chief executive Carlo Brovero said the entrepreneurs joined the Clean Energy Business Incubator Program at Stony Brook in 2016 after considering Northeast incubators from Boston to New York City. They founded StorEn the following year.
“It’s very much focused on energy and energy storage,” he said of the university’s incubator program and Advanced Energy Research & Technology Center.
The New York State Pollution Prevention Institute at the Rochester Institute of Technology and other partners are testing a StorEn prototype battery at the energy center to “validate” the technology, said David C. Hamilton, executive director of SBU’s program and director of operations at the center.
The testing program is expected to help StorEn raise funds for additional development and marketing.
StorEn has raised $659,824 through a now-closed crowdfunding effort on startengine.com, and Brovero said the company is in talks with additional unnamed investors, including some on Long Island.
Unlike Tesla’s Powerwall, which uses solid-state lithium-ion batteries and is aimed at the home market, StorEn’s batteries use liquid electrolytes that contain the metal vanadium in a solution.
