NYCEDC and Newlab Announce New Resilient Energy Cohort Advancing Urban Energy Storage

The Partners Hosted Leaders from the Energy Storage Industry, City Government and Community Organizations at Newlab to Introduce the Startups Participating in the New Resilient Energy Cohort to Advance Pilot Projects across New York City

BROOKLYN, NY—New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) and Newlab, in collaboration with Con Edison, announced the five startups participating in the Resilient Energy Studio, a program designed to cultivate local energy storage capacity across New York City through entrepreneur-led pilot projects and collaboration with community organizations, energy experts, and leading industry stakeholders.

The cohort members and pilot projects were introduced at an event held at Newlab, highlighting the vision for Resilient Energy, the work identifying energy challenges in NYC and how the cohort’s pilot projects will address these challenges. In addition to remarks by Jonathan Lane, NYCEDC’s Vice President of Initiatives, and Newlab Vice President of Product & Programs Shaina Horowitz, the event featured a panel discussion among local energy leaders on the energy storage ecosystem in NYC, including current uncertainties and recent achievements.

Following a robust research sprint that leveraged interviews with a diversity of stakeholders from government, academia, industry and innovation, Newlab emerged with a vision of the future state of energy storage in New York City – one that supports a variety of safe, efficient, and readily deployable energy storage systems to drive impact at scale. Using this vision as a foundation, we identified actionable challenges, including safe energy storage technologies, storage for electric vehicle (EV) charging solutions, novel energy storage approaches and storage technologies oriented around community-level benefits, such as backup resilience and demand response opportunity capture. These challenges guided the recruitment of leading companies with relevant solutions to help chart the path to an equitable energy transition for NYC.

NYCEDC and Newlab selected the following companies from a competitive pool of applicants to participate in the first Resilient Energy cohort:

• Urban Electric Power revolutionizes the traditional single use alkaline battery, transforming it into a powerful rechargeable alkaline battery to meet the needs of changing energy infrastructure.
• WATTMORE builds innovative forecasting tools and future-proof EMS to manage the intermittent nature of renewable energy by seamlessly integrating and managing distributed energy resources.
• Orenda Power paves the way for investment in energy storage by maximizing returns with AI-enabled decision making, allowing organizations to save on electricity expenses and meet sustainability goals.
• ElectricFish enables networked energy storage with extreme-fast EV charging, providing resilient energy infrastructure for communities.
• Yotta Energy aims to be a leader in smart, scalable, and distributed energy solutions to support the transition to clean energy.

“Through the Resilient Energy Studio, NYCEDC and Newlab are supporting the next generation of startups as they define the future of urban energy storage,” said NYCEDC President and CEO Andrew Kimball. “We look forward to working with this new cohort of innovators to increase energy resilience and security, while simultaneously lowering our carbon footprint and strengthening New York City’s tech ecosystem.”

The Resilient Energy Studio is part of NYCEDC and Newlab’s Urbantech NYC partnership addressing key sustainability, equity, and resilience issues critical to achieving NYC’s climate goals. Participating startups will test their technologies in real-world environments across the city, producing valuable insights and creating community benefit.

“We are thrilled to welcome these innovative companies to the Resilient Energy Studio as they work to address the most pressing challenges faced by New York City’s energy ecosystem,” said Shaun Stewart, CEO of Newlab. “As we work towards a more sustainable and equitable future, we have selected startups developing clean, safe and accessible energy storage solutions, and are delighted to work alongside the NYCEDC in supporting these teams as they build, scale and test their next-generation solutions.”

About NYCEDC
New York City Economic Development Corporation is a mission-driven, nonprofit organization that creates shared prosperity across New York City by strengthening neighborhoods and creating good jobs. We work with and for communities to bring emerging industries to New York City; develop spaces and facilities for businesses; empower New Yorkers through training and skill-building; and invest in sustainable and innovative projects that make the city a great place to live and work. To learn more about what we do, visit us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. 

About Newlab
Newlab is a center of invention mobilizing people, capital, and expertise to address systemic challenges in energy, mobility and materials. Newlab reaches across industry and sector lines to connect innovators and experts to build, test and scale world-changing ideas. Through its community, platforms and infrastructure, Newlab is breaking down the world’s greatest challenges into projects and experiments that drive meaningful progress today.

About Con Edison
Con Edison is taking a leadership role in the delivery of a clean energy future by building and operating reliable, resilient, and innovative energy infrastructure, advancing electrification of heating and transportation, and aggressively transitioning away from fossil fuels to a net-zero economy by 2050. The company has a 2-megawatt battery system in Ozone Park, Queens that helps the company keep service reliable at times of peak demand for power. The company also has three 1-megawatt systems at customer properties under an innovative demonstration project. Those systems are on City Island, on the North Shore of Staten Island, and in Woodside, Queens.