01-14-2017, 03:03 AM
Axiom Exergy's president and co-founder Amrit Robbins spoke of "refrigeration batteries" as an energy storage solution for supermarkets. "We take a fundamentally different approach -- rather than sell stacks of batteries, we transform the world's cooling infrastructure into intelligent connected energy storage assets." Robbins notes his firm has "$6 million in sales...to major national supermarket chains." The firm has 13 employees and has raised more than $3.5 million in funding from investors including Element 8 Fund, Victory Capital, the MIT Angels, Propel(x), the Sierra Angels, Tesla CTO JB Straubel, and other undisclosed investors. "We are selling to grocery stores, and life is hard for these folks," said Robbins. They are plagued by razor-thin margins of about 1.3 percent over the last 10 years, according to the co-founder. "And they are spending more on energy -- about three times more energy per square foot -- than other average retailers. They are scrambling to reduce costs by just a few basis points -- and energy is a huge opportunity," he said. "Saving $30,000 on a utility bill is the same as selling an additional $1.5 million of groceries," Robbins added.
Energy Storage Startup Speed Pitch: FreeWire, UtilityAPI, Axiom Exergy | Greentech Media
FreeWire CEO Arcady Sosinov's company is using "second-life" EV batteries to "reach a cost-competitive part of the market that other energy storage players typically cannot be competitive against," allowing them to "address new markets that have largely been ignored by other players." FreeWire provides "a clean and quiet alternative to diesel generators."
Energy Storage Startup Speed Pitch: FreeWire, UtilityAPI, Axiom Exergy | Greentech Media