The Mid-West Energy Research Consortium has named seven startups to the fifth cohort of its WERCBench Labs Accelerator, including three companies each from Wisconsin and Illinois and one from Colorado.
Selected companies and planned products include:
- Accelerate Wind LLC, of Chicago, a commercial rooftop wind installation with patented drive train.
- Agricycle, of Milwaukee, fruit and food solar dehydrators.
- CLOCworks, of Madison, machine learning software to manage building profiles for HVAC systems.
- ELEKTRIFI, of Madison, disaster relief tech platform to manage grids in homes and buildings.
- MESODYNE, of Chicago, ultra-high energy density, multi-fuel, silent, compact power generator.
- OMEGA GRID, of Chicago, financial market software system that determines the most efficient mix of generation and loads on the grid.
- STEAM ENERGY LABS, of Boulder, Colorado, smart thermostats to use to moderate hot water heaters for storage.
“We continue to attract some incredible talent,” said Jacquin Davidson, managing director WERCBench Labs. “This year’s cohort has some exceptional technologies.”
Davidson leads and coordinates the WERCBench program. Companies participate in classes taught by academics, professional experts and industry professionals over 16 weeks with a demo day on March 3, 2020. The statups also get access to leading companies in the energy, power and controls industries.
The program is hosted within the M-WERC Energy Innovation Center on the northwest side of Milwaukee. To date, five graduates of the WERCBench program have moved their businesses into the building at 4201 N. 27th St.
