WESTBROOK, Maine — The renewable energy company that began in a garage in 2010 and by 2013 attracted about $1.1 million in funding now has its sights on building the standard platform for small-scale electricity grids.
Ben Polito, the company’s co-founder and president, said the company is planning another round of fundraising from investors this year to further develop its system to manage various sources of renewable power, power storage and power from the electric grid.
“Everything to this point has been a relatively dumb one-way connection to the grid,” Polito said. “We need a smart system that has the capacity for the two-way flow of energy.”
After a tour of his company Tuesday with U.S. Sen. Angus King, regional U.S. Small Business Administrator Seth Goodall and others, Polito said Pika’s focus is building a new iteration of its REbus microgrid system that would serve as a standard platform for microgrids or smart grids.
That concept refers to where power is generated — whether centrally at a large power plant or using distributed generation from sources such as solar, wind, diesel generators and other power generation technologies on the way. Those systems also could include batteries and other power storage that its microgrid platform would allow to operate in tandem.
That technology reflects the next stage of the company’s development, from its start developing a wind turbine for residential use.
Andrew Hickok, the company’s director of business development, said Pika has been working to attract partners for its REbus technology, which include companies that design and install renewable energy products.
Hickok said the company’s focus on developing that platform comes to serve a need for a “plug and play” system allowing connections from various renewable energy generation technologies that could be designed for that power management platform.
Polito said the company’s systems require installation by someone with special training and require different units for off-the-grid users and those with a grid connection. The system in the works would be able to work in both situations, and Polito said that any licensed electrician would be able to install it in a home.
Microgrids and smart grids have gotten attention from policymakers in Maine, as state regulators are considering whether to designate the Portland-based company GridSolar as the state’s “smart grid coordinator.” The staff of the Maine Public Utilities Commission last week suggested the state solicit bids for companies seeking that role. Polito said he hasn’t considered Pika taking a role in that state effort.
Polito declined to state how much Pika wants to raise from investors, in exchange for equity in the company, to support development of its Phase II system. The company has so far raised about $1.2 million through both debt and equity offerings, according to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. It opened another round of funding in April 2014 seeking $500,000, but it did not report selling any of that offering to investors.
In its early stages, the company won $150,000 in a federal Small Business Innovation Research grant through the Department of Energy and two separate loans totaling about $500,000 from the Maine Technology Institute.
Representatives from those agencies were on hand for the tour Tuesday, in part to draw attention to Pika as a company that’s taken federal and state grant funding and loans to develop a new renewable technology product.
King’s visit followed a stop Monday at Mount Abram ski resort to see renewable energy projects there.
King said Tuesday that he sees energy research investment as one of the most consequential roles of the federal government, noting that federal funds supported development of hydraulic fracturing techniques that fueled the boom in shale oil and sharply boosted domestic oil product in the United States.
“This could be the hydrofracking of 20 years from now,” King said, referring to Pika’s energy research and development. “That took 30 years to be commercially feasible, but it transformed our economy in about five years.”
In July, the 11-person company got a $700,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory that Pika Operations Manager Bill Hetzel said allowed the company to reduce the cost of producing its turbines from hundreds of dollars to tens of dollars.
Hetzel said the company has a patent pending on the process it uses to make those blades. Polito said the company has its systems installed in 16 states and South America.