Leading Cutting-Edge Cleantechs to Commercialization: Interview with Build Edison’s Founder and CEO Kristin Barbato
It is 10 AM on a cloudy Friday morning in New York when I meet Kristin Barbato, Founder and CEO of Build Edison, over Microsoft Teams. On her 85th day of home quarantine, despite the early hour, she has been working on her company’s many projects for five hours already. Kristin founded Build Edison in 2018 to help innovative cleantech companies to avoid the “valley of death,” by supporting their business planning and development, as well connecting them to policymakers, regulators, utilities, and corporates. In short, Build Edison’s mission is to help cleantechs grow and reach commercialization faster.
Build Edison now has a team of 12, including part-time team members and interns, counts innovative entrepreneurs among its advisors, is working with institutions such as the Rocky Mountain Institute, Con Edison, and NYSERDA, and supports start-ups that offer innovative solutions in various fields related to cleantech.
Hi Kristin, thank you for sitting down with me today! I‘m going to ask you all about Build Edison, its mission, and the cleantech space. But first tell me, do you always start your workday before 5 am?
Well, today is a special day. We’ve had some really exciting developments this week. There are so many great projects on the horizon. So, I woke up thinking about them and finally just started working super early today — I probably gave up on sleeping already at 4:10 AM. But that is not a normal day. Although unfortunately, I have been known to annoy people with emails at weird hours.
What are you working on?
The focus of Build Edison is to bring cleantech solutions to commercialization faster. To achieve this, we work with start-ups, large corporate-strategics, investors, as well as governments.
This week for example, we had a fantastic update call with our advisors. In all areas we work on, our portfolio companies are making progress: built environment, renewables and storage on the distribution side, smart grids, as well as electric mobility and transport technology as a bridge from the customer to the electricity grid. We’re also developing an innovative funding instrument to help cleantechs demonstrate and de-risk their hardware solutions and to accelerate their path to commercialization.
During this overall challenging COVID time, we’ve been incredibly busy supporting our clients, which led to several notable victories. For example, our client WexEnergy who developed innovative energy efficiency solution WindowSkin®, has recently won the Urban Future Prize Competition in New York City. It was fantastic to see WexEnergy win because their solution will help cut emissions and improve energy efficiency at large scale. WindowSkin upgrades a single or double-paned window to double or triple-pane efficiency through custom-fit insulation. It is easy to install, allows customers to generate energy savings, all at a fraction of the cost of window replacement.
We’ve seen fantastic growth and continued demand for our services. Over the course of our two and a half year-history we’ve now had over 20 clients, coming from across the US, the UK, Europe, Asia, and now also Africa!
How do you and your Build Edison team help a start-up?
Our clients on the solution-provider side are not all start-ups, but can also be larger companies with a new technology or clean energy solution that they want to bring to the U.S. market. One of them is Murata, which is based in Japan and has a really impressive and safe LFP battery technology. Right now, we are supporting their expansion to the U.S.
Most of our current work is advisory, helping companies with their product and go-to-market strategy, business development, and also connecting them to potential project developers, investors, and clients. Customers usually think of us as a “chief commercial officer for hire.” Oftentimes, we work with companies with hardware solutions that have been working on their technology for a long time but don’t have a lot of market experience. Or if they do, they might need additional help.
We are in a great position to support them, since our team has vast experience on the “buy-side” or customer side of procuring clean energy solutions, both for government, utilities, and corporate strategics.
Do you also work directly with the government and these corporates?
Currently, we work a lot with NYSERDA — the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority — and we also work with any other government entity actively pursuing climate goals like the City of New York. On the public sector and utilities side we are working with National Grid, Con Edison, and Central Hudson in New York, and we have also worked with electric utilities in South Africa, China, Florida, and California.
We help these entities to improve and accelerate their innovation processes, as well as enhance their access to new technologies. Simultaneously, we develop new programs and strategies for them to enable cleantech companies — who have the technology — to get the capital and the resources they need.
How did you develop the idea of founding Build Edison?
Ah, I love this question! Build Edison intends to bridge the gap on the innovation adoption curve. We connect utilities, corporates, and the government who are looking for the next new technology, and the innovative start-ups that have viable solutions.
Throughout the last decade of my career across private sector and utilities, I kept seeing that new technologies faced incredible difficulties to break into the energy market. These entry barriers usually stem from either high costs or complex regulatory policies and very insular networks — it is hard to know where to go and who to work with in this field. That decade-long experience really is what has driven me to found Build Edison.
I want to help companies with great clean energy solutions and to scoop them right across the “valley of death.”
Why did you choose New York to establish Build Edison?
It’s fantastic to be based in this city and have strong connections to a state with very favorable energy and climate regulations and policy. Plus, the whole world of energy is coming through New York. It’s a really exciting place to be in this industry!
I’ll give you one example of a company we’re working with, called Power HV. It is based in Canada, but has its roots in Johannesburg, South Africa. They have a smart grid technology, which offers low-cost, efficient bushings, and associated sensors for distribution-level transformers. These usually don’t have a lot of monitoring capabilities, but are still exposed issues causing power outages, just like large transformers. Power HV already has ongoing projects in Canada and South Africa and are now looking to bring their solution to the U.S. As they’re expanding in the country, New York is their first stop, since the State actively promotes clean energy and smart grids.
What exactly do your projects look like?
Our approach to helping utilities and governments to get access to new technology faster is somewhat of a de-risking toolbox: De-risking a new technology both from a financial and from an operational perspective. That’s why we help them develop demonstration projects which really help both of our client groups: The prospective buyer can see how the solution addresses their needs, while the solution-provider gets highly valuable feedback that allows for improvement. I know from my time with utilities that the success of such projects depends on foreseeing what exactly needs to be tested in the company-specific environment.
One of the companies we’ve been realizing demonstration projects for is BOSS Controls. They enable small to medium-sized commercial buildings to improve their energy efficiency in completely revolutionary ways. BOSS Controls installs an IoT solution, which monitors and facilitates buildings’ energy conservation with a push of a button. They enable Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings (GEB) and since their solution is much cheaper than other solutions on the market, BOSS Controls gives smaller companies with smaller real estate the same capabilities that previously only large companies could afford.
What are the technologies you feel most passionate and optimistic about?
I think the distribution grid is where I’d like a lot of innovation to happen in the near future. We have many large-scale innovations on the energy resources side, such as biogas or ever larger offshore wind turbines. But the many distributed energy resources behind the meter, efficiency solutions within buildings, or charging infrastructure for EVs are going to have a tremendous impact on the grid. We need to be able to transfer electricity between producers, houses, vehicles, all sorts of devices, and the grid effortlessly and securely. Utilities now have a need to measure, project, and integrate those types of solutions.
And while I’ve seen first-hand that software solutions are fantastic, we also need to invest in hardware and improved infrastructure. Otherwise we’ll be optimizing an aging infrastructure and won’t meet our ambitious climate and energy goals.
You are also a professor at Columbia University. What is the key message you want your students to take away from your class?
The class I teach at Columbia is called “Energy Management for Public and Private Sector Portfolios.” It gives graduate public policy students the perspective of an energy operator in a government or a corporation. Too often, energy policies can be wish lists rather than actionable strategies. I hope to change that.
Until 25 years ago, “energy management” was many times just a single person in the accounting department, paying the utility bill. Now, it has grown into a much bigger enterprise for businesses and corporations. Only when the students understand this business, can their policies help shift the needle on what we need to achieve: clean, efficient energy solutions for our economy.
If you would like to get in touch with Kristin, please contant Natalia Sharova, Communications Manager, via info@buildedison.com
At Build Edison, we have decades of experience in developing, managing, and financing demonstration projects across various clean energy technologies. We offer a number of solutions for startups, large companies, governments and investors to grow quickly and consistently, and to capitalize on one of the most exciting areas of the energy market.
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