Start-up companies offering battery-operated airplanes, a video-based monitoring system to verify how fish are caught and new ways to install, track and store solar technology are among Elemental Excelerator’s newest cohort for 2019.
Elemental Excelerator, a Hawaii nonprofit and startup accelerator, selected 20 companies to add to its portfolio. Every year, the organization selects 15 to 20 companies that best fit its mission of improving people’s lives and solving world challenges through innovative solutions, and offers them funds of up to $1 million each.
“We’re really excited about this cohort,” said Aki Marceau, managing director of community and policy. “It’s our largest yet.”
Elemental Excelerator selected the 20 from 500 applicants, Marceau said. The group of companies is more diverse than in previous years, focusing not only on energy solutions but on nonfossil-fuel transportation and recycling waste into useful products.
The startups are based in Hawaii, California and other mainland locales, but all solutions are potentially applicable to the islands. Many plan to start projects in Hawaii, hire locally and, possibly expand to the Asia-Pacific region.
“We see Hawaii as a testbed for all these innovations, especially in energy, mobility, agriculture and water,” said Marceau. “We have a lot of the right conditions and the business community to nurture, incubate and grow these companies.”
The 20 companies, along with local business and community leaders, convened Friday afternoon for a “Town Square” at the IBM Building courtyard in Ward Village to brainstorm ways to help Hawaii diversify its economy, reach its renewable energy goals and solve its challenges in agriculture and transportation.
Ampaire, a California-based startup that retrofits airplanes with batteries, is working with Mokulele Airlines to launch a project here because Hawaii’s short-hop trips are ideal testing grounds. Ampaire has developed an electric powertrain that would replace turboprop engines in nine- to 19-passenger airplanes.
Scoot Networks, which operates a fleet of shared electric scooters, bicycles and kick-scooters in San Francisco and Barcelona, was selected as well.
While there is no shared electric scooter operation in Hawaii, Elemental Excelerator selected Scoot as a mobility solution, along with Proterra, which manufactures battery electric buses. In May, the electric scooter company Lime attempted to launch dockless scooters in Honolulu but was promptly kicked out by city officials after placing them on sidewalks overnight without permission.
Scoot was one of two companies recently granted a permit by San Francisco officials to operate dockless kick-scooters in the city.
One of the Hawaii-based companies selected was Blue Planet Energy, founded by Henk Rogers, which offers lithium ferrous phosphate battery systems for solar-generated energy storage. The systems have been deployed here as well as on the U.S. mainland and in Puerto Rico.
Steph Speirs, co-founder and CEO of
Solstice, which was also selected, is an ‘Iolani School graduate now living in Boston.
Solstice offers customer management software and other tools for community solar programs to make it more accessible to everyone, including renters and residents who cannot afford the systems. Speirs said her goal is to one day bring the technology to Hawaii.
Elemental Excelerator also chose to invest in FlyWire Cameras, founded by Jacob Isaac-Lowry, a University of Hawaii at Manoa alumnus. FlyWire manufactures electronic monitoring systems to verify sustainable fishing practices at sea.
To date, Elemental Excelerator has awarded more than $30 million to more than 80 companies. Funding comes from a combination of sources, including corporate partners, the U.S. Navy, U.S. Department of Energy, state governments and philanthropic organizations.
