February 12, 2024 — National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
To put it simply: Antora Energy, a Shell Gamechanger Accelerator Powered by NRELTM (GCxN) graduate, focused on decarbonizing industry by converting low-cost, intermittent renewable electricity into reliable industrial energy, would not be where it is today without the help of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
“We got our first thermophotovoltaic (TPV) cells from NREL in 2018,” said Tarun Narayan, principal engineer at Antora. “Cells from NREL are among the most efficient TPV cells ever made. If we didn’t have NREL and we had to figure it out ourselves, we’d probably still be figuring it out.”
Antora is not alone in the sentiment.
“In the beginning, we had this new idea, but we had no money,” said Peter Luttik, former vice president of technology for 7AC Technologies and, after the company was acquired, now a consultant for Copeland. “With NREL’s help, investors knew that this was not just a bunch of guys in a garage.”
NREL and its corporate and philanthropic program-sponsor partners such as Wells Fargo, Chevron, and Shell often help startups like Antora and 7AC at their earliest stages so they can get off the ground and start the journey to bring disruptive technologies into the market. This often comes through programs offered by NREL’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center (IEC) and partnerships and license agreements managed by the Technology Transfer Office (TTO). It also occurs earlier in a startup’s development when NREL can validate emerging technologies, as NREL has experts on staff and maintains equipment that startups often cannot otherwise afford or access.
