Description of venture idea
This venture produces and sells a standardized interconnection hardware system for commercial businesses.
First Product
- A standardized, modular physical system consisting of two 50-ft containers. Requires <3,000 sqft, including fire and access setbacks.
- Built and tested in a factory, and delivered onsite.
- Provides 20 MWh of resiliency to let the customer keep running critical operations (e.g. refrigerators and freezers, processing payments) and to minimize demand charges.
- Takes whatever the feeder voltage is (12 kV or 7.2 kV or whatever) and converts down to the desired end-use voltage (typically 480 V or 208 V), for example using coreless or solid-state transformers.
- Also includes circuit recloser, relays (to deal with undercurrent, undervoltage, etc.), and customer-owned meter, a transformer to step up the voltage to grid discharge, and similarly, to step down to grid charge
Note
Not super relevant for data centers: Data centers will be such big loads, a single container won’t do anything for them.
Market needs this venture would address
- Faster interconnection process for commercial businesses (e.g. big-box stores) by virtue of not requiring any complex transformer or switchgear work on the part of the utility.
Technical capabilities this venture might leverage
- Alex Q. Huang at UT Austin does hybrid transformers, part semiconductor and part copper coils. Lets you have a much higher power transformer that can be pole-mounted and where you can control the voltage.
- High-Power High-Frequency Coreless Transformer
Business model
- Likely sell or rent these standardized containers.
Team
None
Outstanding risks
TBD
References
Suggested by 2024-06-28 JD Hammerly (Glarus Group)