CalSEED seeks applications from individuals, businesses and nonprofits that are working on early stage innovations — from concept to basic prototype.
Donor Name: New Energy Nexus
State: California
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 03/05/2023
Size of the Grant: $150,000
Details:
CalSEED gives grants to early-stage clean energy innovators throughout California.
The California Sustainable Energy Entrepreneur Development Initiative (CalSEED) is made possible by the California Energy Commission and funded through the Electric Program Investment Charge. CalSEED is administered by New Energy Nexus.
CalSEED provides Concept Awards to promising innovators, awarding them $150,000 in grant funding, unprecedented professional development resources, and access to the best accelerator and incubator programs in California. Concept Award winners are also eligible to compete for a $450,000 Prototype Award in the annual Business Plan Competition.
CalSEED supports early-stage entrepreneurs in delivering projects that respond to clean energy, efficiency, or storage needs while considering equity of access and benefit, ensuring these technologies are working to serve California’s most vulnerable populations. As the first step in California’s innovation pipeline, the program incubates energy concepts and readies them for investment and deployment by providing:
- Targeted professional development services including mentorship with seasoned professionals, legal counsel, expert guidance, and training to support technology refinements, market development, and commercialization.
- Direct, non-dilutive grant-based funding to advance clean energy innovations to commercialization ($150K for Concept Awards, and a $450K Prototype Award to winners of the annual Business Plan Competition).
- Access to key accelerator and incubator programs and test facilities.
- Enhanced access to private capital.
Eligible Applicants
- CalSEED seeks applications from individuals, businesses and nonprofits that are working on early stage innovations — from concept to basic prototype.
- Specifically, CalSEED seeks hardware, software, or integrated solutions that fall between Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) 2-4 on the DOE defined TRL scale.
- Eligibility criteria will be used to determine which applicants will be asked to complete a full application and advance to the review committee. Please only apply if you can respond yes to the following statements:
- The proposed innovation benefits California ratepayers — through either greater reliability, lower utility costs, and/or increased safety
- You are located in California, can provide your California address, and are in good standing with the California Secretary of State
- Your company is under the $1 Million private funding cap
- Your concept is on the pre-demonstration scale (Technology Readiness Level 2-4)
- Your innovation fits within one of the specified technology areas below
Technology Areas
For the 2023 Concept Awards, applications are being accepted for only these technologies
Energy Storage
- Non-lithium-ion short-duration technologies with reduced capital and life-cycle cost, better lifetime performance, access to greater depth of discharge, reduced degradation over time, better round-trip efficiency, and improved supply-chain diversity relative to lithium-ion battery systems.
- Long-duration storage technologies capable of storing energy for 8 hours or longer, specifically: flow batteries, advanced battery chemistries such as solid-state batteries, flywheels, compressed air, liquid air systems, molten salt, molten sulfur, or gravity storage.
- Technologies that advance low-impact recovery of lithium and other co-products from geothermal brine.
DER Integration
- Advanced machine learning or AI techniques to improve forecasting behind-the-meter solar photovoltaics, storage, and load flexibility
- Low-cost, modular, and replicable behind-the-meter direct current power systems that enable efficient, clean, and reliable power for electric vehicles and other direct current end-uses.
- Modular power electronics technologies that can safely enable behind-the-meter renewable generation systems to provide backup power functionality at reduced cost.
- Advanced flexible load technologies and tools to facilitate and increase grid resiliency and demand response in the industrial, agricultural, and water sectors.
- Open-source data and management controls that can be used by Virtual Power Plant aggregators and others to aggregate customer loads, manage the loads to grid conditions, and provide grid services needed to support a clean and resilient electric grid.
- Advances in control technologies, sensors, and communication systems to increase reliability and interoperability of flexible loads and DERs for building automation.
Transportation Electrification
- High efficiency charging devices and systems that reduce electric losses and costs of electric vehicle charging.
- High-power electric drive systems for medium- and heavy-duty vehicle applications.
- Innovative reuse and recycling technologies for end-of-life lithium-ion batteries to conserve critical materials, promote material sustainability, reduce environmental impacts, or reduce the cost of new storage products by lowering material costs.
Building Decarbonization
- High efficiency 120-volt and 240-volt heat pump water heaters or heating, ventilation, and air conditioning heat pumps that use low-global warming potential refrigerants.
- New building envelope technologies such as thermal storage or phase change materials, or manufacturing processes to reduce the cost of highly efficient advanced building retrofit solutions.
- Next generation heat pump system that combines hot water and space conditioning into a packaged, modular unit.
- Innovative HVAC decarbonization solutions for large commercial buildings, specifically: hybrid low-GWP electric heat pump systems, low-cost large air-source and water-source heat pumps that use low-GWP refrigerants, non-vapor compression cooling, solid-state cooling, or ground-source heat pumps.
Industrial Decarbonization
- Low-carbon, high-temperature industrial heating solutions, specifically: direct electrification technologies or high-temperature heat pumps.
- Energy efficiency and decarbonization technologies for concrete manufacturing, specifically: advancements in electrically driven carbon capture and utilization to increase its energy efficiency; alternative raw materials, chemistries, or processes for the production of cement and concrete, including substitutes that enable electrification technologies by reducing temperature requirements.
- Innovative electric-driven separation technologies in the industrial sector, specifically in food processing, chemicals, water desalination, wastewater treatment, or carbon capture.
For more information, visit New Energy Nexus .
