Each team will have the opportunity to present their technology and business plan to this exclusive audience at annual MegaWatt Ventures’ inaugural business plan competition on Oct. 20 and 21 at UCF’s Florida Solar Energy Center in Cocoa.
The 2011 MegaWatt Venture’s finalists include: OrgSolar (Melbourne), Cyclocean (Vero Beach), RedOx Fuel Cells (Gainesville), Mud Power (St. Petersburg), Mesdi Systems (Orlando), SenNova Inc. (Orlando), Verdicorp Inc. (Tallahassee) and I-Red LLC (Edgewater). While some of these companies have been involved in production or research prior to Megawatt Ventures, most were created as a result of the funding provided from becoming a finalist in this competition, including support from The Entrepreneurship Law Firm. The technologies that the competing companies are working with span across several different renewable energy sources and are being developed in conjunction with Florida university researchers at the University of Central Florida, Florida Institute of Technology, Florida State University, University of Florida and University of South Florida.
The event’s awards luncheon and ceremony will feature keynote speaker Cheryl Martin, the current deputy director for commercialization for the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E). ARPA-E was created within the U.S.Department of Energy to promote creative transformational research and to bridge the gap between that research and developmental industrial innovation in order to revitalize the clean energy movement in our country. She is personally responsible for leading her organization’s commercialization program to help breakthrough energy technologies succeed in the marketplace, and she will share those strategies during her speech.
During MegaWatt Ventures Business Plan Competiton, the eight teams will present their business plans to an esteemed panel of judges. The judging panel will consist of influential businessmen and women from The Dow Chemical Company, Venrock, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, Pangaea Ventures, Arsenal Venture Partners, Siemens, Mitsubishi Power Systems, The Walt Disney Company, Turbine Technology Services and General Physics. These judges will be seeking technologies and business plans that will create a renewable energy resource that offers solutions to challenges in economic and energy development in the near future.
Admission is limited, and advanced registration is required. For more information, please contact Andrea Wesser, Megawatt Ventures Program Manager, at 407-882-0594.