This Trio of UNB Grads Invested in Innovation Education to Launch A Clean Energy Tech Company
Author: Engineering Alumni Office
Posted on Aug 29, 2017
Category: Alumni Spotlight
Jordan Kennie (BsCEE’16; MTME’17), CEO of Stash Energy, considers the $14,000 he spent on tuition for the Master of Technology Management and Entrepreneurship (MTME) program at the University of New Brunswick as an investment that he’ll quickly see returned. Without the program, he feels the probability of successfully launching his tech startup would have been much lower.
Kennie is part of a trio of UNB engineering alumni that also includes Daniel Larsen (BsCEE’16; MTME’17), COO, and Erik Hatfield (BScCMPE’16; MTME’17), CTO, who enrolled in the MTME program at UNB after creating an energy storage solution as their senior year design project in the undergraduate engineering program. The three took part in UNB’s Summer Institute after graduation, a program also run by the Technology Management & Entrepreneurship program at UNB.
“The Summer Institute was the logical next step,” says Kennie, “because it helped us transition from thinking like engineers to thinking like business owners. Honestly, I did have doubts about spending the time and money on the MTME program instead of just jumping into getting our company up and running ourselves very quickly. But I now feel it was well worth the investment because the business skills we learned, and because of the mentorship and funding resources we received. It allowed us to produce a quality of work that far exceeds what it would have been without the program. I’m much more confident that our company will be successful and profitable.”
Kennie and his team say that the MTME program awakened them to the realities of what it takes to launch a company in a competitive business world. It allowed them to explore ideas without risk and validate them, and it gave them the framework and support to refine their product for the market, develop a long-term plan, understand the art of branding, and get them ready to secure venture capital.
Stash Energy provides a solution to utilities struggling to meet electricity demand during peak hours, and to homeowners and businesses paying a premium because of this. Electricity spikes during the morning and early evening hours, forcing utilities to have to open more power plants or buy expensive electricity from another region to meet demand during those times. That cost means bigger bills for customers. All the while, clean renewable energy from thermal, solar and wind power is being wasted because it comes onto the grid primarily in non-peak hours and therefore is not used. Until now, there has been no viable and affordable way to store that power and put it into use to meet demand during peak times.
The chemical-tech solution that Stash has created is a unique and affordable solution that allows homeowners to connect the product, which is about the size of a water heater, to a heat pump to store thermal energy overnight for use during peak times. It saves the customer money and relieves pressure on the grid. Customers can monitor and adjust their energy usage, and utilities can send unused renewable energy to the storage units so that customers will have it. The renewable energy problem, the trio says, is not one of installation but of integration. One they’ve designed the answer to.
The company’s primary potential customers are utilities who will purchase their storage units in bulk and rent or sell the product to their homeowner and business customers. Stash has now moved into office space in Fredericton and is securing venture capital to supply prototypes to the first customers. As part of their studies in the MTME program, Kennie, Larsen and Hatfield began a pilot project with e Electric in PEI, and have been working directly with them to build the data they need and refine their product and system further. In fact, they’re upgrading their product now, and are on their way to signing on three other early-adopter customers.
Stash Energy was accepted into Energia Ventures, an accelerator program in partnership with UNB that focuses on businesses that are in energy, smart grid, clean tech and cybersecurity. Through Energia, Kennie and his team were able to meet the right people and pitch their company to investors and the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation. They also received money from TME, the National Research Council and Opportunities NB. “We’ve received over $40,000 for our startup in the past year, and we expect more to come through very soon, which we’ll use to continue to grow.
The trio agrees that one of the most important things they learned through the MTME program was the importance of trials and data to show potential customers. “Enrolling in the MTME program not only gave us the tangible business skills and confidence to launch our business the right way, it’s given us the contacts and network that will allow us to ramp up to the small-scale manufacturing company we’ll need to become in the next year” Kennie explains. “As we gain experience with pilot projects and early-adopter customers locally, we’ll be expanding to jurisdictions like the southern United States and Europe.”
Would Kennie, Larsen and Hatfield have been able to learn what they needed to launch their company with successful results had they not invested in the Master of Technology Management and Entrepreneurship? Perhaps, but it surely would have taken much more effort and time, and Kennie feels they would have a less substantial company. For this trio of engineers, a degree in innovation paid off and gave them energy to spare. Or store.