NYC launches $2.5 m. competition to find Israeli clean energy partners
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has launched the New York Power Authority-Israel Smart Energy Challenge, a $2.5 million competition to attract collaborations between Israeli clean energy companies and New York’s public utility.
The NYPA will work with the Israel Smart Energy Association to identify Israeli companies capable of advancing power grid reliability, storage, sustainability and affordability for New York residents and the environment. The competition also advances New York’s Green New Deal, launched by Cuomo to target a zero-carbon emissions electricity sector by 2040.
“We have sent a message to the world that New York is open for business and, based on our strong history of collaboration with innovative Israeli companies, this new competition will further diversify and grow our economy,” said Cuomo, who visited Israel in June 2019.
“Israeli companies are developing new technologies with the potential to take us into the next generation of resilient, renewable and affordable energy systems, and we look forward to building new partnerships that will get us there, together.”
Several companies will be identified through the competition and will work with the
NYPA, the largest state public utility in the US, to scale up their technologies via pilot demonstration projects answering specific operational needs of power utilities.
Solutions will be evaluated according to their potential to save money, improve safety or operations, reduce maintenance and improve efficiency. Selected technologies must be viable, replicable and capable of being commercialized.
“NYPA’s collaboration with Israeli technology companies will yield mutual benefit by introducing new solutions for commercial usage in large scale electric utilities,” said the head of the NYPA-Israel Innovation
Hub, Doron Gover. “The challenge will finance and enable pilot installation of innovative solutions in order to achieve significant advances in grid reliability, storage, sustainability and affordability.”
According to Cuomo’s office, the competition adds to a series of existing relationships with Israeli technology companies to support NYPA’s efforts to go fully digital. These include associations with transmission monitoring system start-up mPrest, which has rolled out its system at several NYPA facilities, and testing the use of thermal energy storage at a SUNY campus with developer Brenmiller Energy.