After three months of intense focus, camaraderie and both virtual and in-person learning, The DeltaClimeVT Energy 2024 climate economy business accelerator announces Rock Rabbit as the peer-selected winner.
Fifteen entrepreneurs from eight start-ups focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions by enabling the acceleration of electrification graduated from the DeltaClimeVT Energy 2024 climate economy business accelerator during an awards ceremony at Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center June 13. At the event, each company presented their final pitch and shared their plans to scale their start-up companies. The DeltaClimeVT business accelerator program, managed by Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund (VSJF), aims to bring innovative technologies, services, and business models to Vermont to reach Vermont’s climate and renewable energy goals more quickly while also ensuring the inclusion of low-to-moderate income residents in our energy transition.
Rock Rabbit delivers an AI-powered platform and app that makes it fast, easy and reliable to find and claim incentives for green home upgrades. Chosen through a peer-review process, the company received a $25,000 award.
“It’s just incredibly humbling, to say the least,” said Aimee Gotway Bailey, Rock Rabbit founder and CEO during the acceptance of the award. “The corporate partners and the mentors of the DeltaClimeVT program have been incredibly generous with their time. I’ve never experienced anything like that. Everyone said yes to having a conversation. And then they were very candid about providing feedback, even if sometimes it wasn’t always the feedback you wanted to hear but it helps make your company better and it helps make you develop a product that’s better so that’s been incredible. We’ve been in a few accelerators – this has been the best by far.”
BED awarded a pilot project Moduly, which is a smart energy system behind the meter integrating plug-and-play home energy storage and IoT devices in a single ecosystem. Additional Vermont companies and utilities are in talks with all eight cohort companies to implement further pilot projects.
“This is one of the best things we do in Vermont energy space every single year and it’s always exciting to hear like what’s going on, what companies are coming up with what ideas and we’re really fortunate to get to hear about them,” said Darren Springer, General Manager, Burlington Electric. “We have a really high rental population and it’s not often that we get to pilot something innovative with our renters. With EV charging, a lot of the times it’s tougher, not easier if you’re a renter to have an electric vehicle. It’s tougher, not easier to get a heat pump, particularly if your property owner isn’t so inclined to install them. What I love about Moduly’s technology is that we can literally plug it into any outlet and we can sign up a customer to be on board with helping to reduce our peak and then giving that customer some resilience during an outage.”
During Energy 2024, the eighth DeltaClimeVT business accelerator cohort, the start-up entrepreneurs worked on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and working with Vermont utilities to help achieve the goals in Vermont’s Climate Action Plan. The selected cohort companies focused on electrification, load management controls integrated with storage, heat pumps, electric vehicle charging equipment and building systems, efficiency and climate resilience and mitigation.
“We had an amazing mix of companies this year addressing climate change mitigation as well as resilience, from grid services like bidirectional electric vehicle charging and storage solutions to innovative emergency response and recovery platforms for utility operations many of these companies are in talks with Vermont utilities and are ready to deploy to help Vermont through the energy transition.” said Geoff Robertson, Managing Director of DeltaClimeVT at VSJF.
In February eight start-up companies from all over the U.S. and Canada were selected to take part in the three-month intensive learning experience where the entrepreneurs completed an intensive curriculum, developed by ecosVC™, which included online workshops, webinars, and mentoring sessions.
“Vermont may be one of the smallest states in the nation but the state and its utilities have leaders in the adoption of new energy solutions,” said Joseph Steig, Director at ecosVC and facilitator DeltaClimeVT. “The 2024 DeltaClimeVT cohort represents our most mature group of startups to date. These companies come from around the country and are ready to deploy solutions today to help further improve the lives of Vermonters.”
DeltaClimeVT Energy 2024 Cohort Companies:
- $25,000 peer-selected award – Rock Rabbit delivers an AI-powered platform and app that makes it fast, easy and reliable to find and claim incentives for green home upgrades. The TurboTax-like product makes it easy for contractors and homeowners to navigate and claim rebates, tax credits, and financing. Rock Rabbit also partners directly with incentive providers, such as utilities and governments, to lower participation barriers and administrative costs of these programs. California
- Pilot project awarded by Burlington Electric Department (BED) – Moduly is a smart energy system behind the meter integrating plug-and-play home energy storage and IoT devices in a single ecosystem. The energy management strategy coordinates energy consumption production, and storage, to reduce the peak of consumption, save on consumers’ electricity bills, optimize solar production and gain energy resilience. For Distribution utilities we provide Virtual Power Plant based on DER behind the meter to perform demand response, reduce electricity cost and assist the grid during peak loads. Quebec & Florida
- Bidirectional Energy turns EVs into distributed batteries for our electric grid. They provide a mobile app and charger installation service that lets EV owners earn money by selling energy from their EVs back into the grid. For utilities, they provide a Virtual Power Plant (VPP) consisting of consumer EVs that gives utilities easily dispatchable power to reduce electricity load on the grid, helping them meet their capacity planning and carbon reduction goals. California
- ElecGrid is a startup based in Newport, Vermont that is helping electric utilities to more efficiently manage resources in their day-to-day field maintenance of infrastructure and when responding to disasters that impact the electrical grid. The company’s secure and accessible platform streamlines both daily and emergency operations while reducing the number of ancillary software and information systems that a utility is required to manage, offering solutions that reduce costs, enhance operational efficiency, support disaster recovery efforts, and aid in financial reporting for FEMA. Vermont
- EMPEQ uses proprietary computer vision technology to put unique power in the hands of users. One photograph from a handheld device instantly identifies equipment/parts, digitizes specifications, and gleans insights like remaining useful life, cost/energy saving alternatives, and many others. Their customers utilize the technology to reduce the time spent on the field work and back office data entry associated with energy efficient retrofit reports and proposals by 50-80%. New York
- Induction Food Systems (IFS) is a hardware startup that develops heating systems for equipment suppliers that enable food & beverage manufacturers to improve throughput of high-value liquid products by up to 50% and their plant’s energy efficiency by up to 10%. Their FluxCore heating system uses renewable energy to provide heat to industrial processes instead of fossil-based fuels, helping reduce Scope 1 emissions by up to 25% per site. North Carolina
- Noteworthy AI helps utilities evaluate the condition of the electric distribution grid at-scale using vehicle-mounted cameras, edge computing and computer vision. As the vehicles drive, the camera system autonomously geolocates, photographs and analyzes grid assets to help utilities gain grid intelligence across several applications, including: asset inventory/GIS clean up, asset inspections, vegetation management, 3rd party attachment assessments, lighting and more. By automating this data collection and analysis process, Noteworthy can significantly increase situational awareness on the distribution grid while reducing operations and maintenance costs. Connecticut
- EarthEn develops thermo-mechanical energy storage solutions that use CO2 in a closed loop to store 4-100+ hours of energy in a uniquely flexible & future-proof manner. Their technology is highly configurable to address various electrification mechanisms in using sCO2 as a working fluid to convert heat to electricity–one of which is where they can convert CO2 pipelines into energy storage assets. EarthEn’s mission is to enable Earth’s electrification and their long duration thermo-mechanical energy storage solutions are the first step in that path. California
Partners and sponsors of DeltaClimeVT Energy 2024 include, Jane’s Trust Foundation, Burlington Electric Department, Vermont Public Power Supply Authority, Efficiency Vermont, Green Mountain Power, VSECU, Vermont Electric Coop, VGS, Vermont Economic Development Authority, The Vermont Community Foundation, Vermont Electric Power Company, and DINSE.
To learn more about DeltaClimeVT Energy 2024, visit deltaclimevt.com.
About DeltaClimeVT – A Climate Economy Business Accelerator
The DeltaClimeVT business accelerator is a Vermont-based program serving startup and seed-stage ventures focusing on energy and climate economy innovation in the energy sector. The program provides an intense accelerated learning and business development process designed to test assumptions, expose and remediate business vulnerabilities, prepare for significant investment, and provide a platform for rapid scaling. As a proven leader in sustainability, Vermont offers participants access to a large number of entrepreneurial climate economy and energy experts throughout the program. The program is managed by the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund (VSJF). deltaclimevt.com
About Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund
In addition to offering the DeltaClimeVT business accelerator to startup and seed stage entrepreneurs, the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund (VSJF) provides business assistance, value chain facilitation, network development, and strategic planning to a wide range of stakeholders in the agriculture and food system, forest product, waste management, renewable energy, and environmental technology sectors. Located in Montpelier, Vermont, VSJF was created by the Vermont Legislature in 1995 to partner with state government, private sector businesses, and nonprofits to build a thriving economic, social, and ecological future for Vermont.
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