Energy could spark tech ecosystem

We tend to forget that technology innovation doesn’t arise in isolation but rather flows through history along linked rivers. One groundbreaking project underway in Connecticut reminds us of these ties, literally connected to a river and some very old history.

At its core is a proposed fuel cell plant just approved for long-term contracts by the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. The power generation plant, in New Britain, would support an ultra-high-speed data center worth perhaps $1 billion, which could transform the whole Connecticut technology scene.

The 20-megawatt plant — at a cost of $100 million, and that’s just the first phase — would be built inside old, idle factory buildings owned by Stanley Black & Decker, where tens of thousands of workers turned out hardware until the 1990s.

The statewide ecosystem that includes that power plant-data center complex extends to Greenwich and Redding, where key players live; to Derby and the Atlantic Ocean off the Rhode Island coast, where another large fuel cell plant and an even larger offshore wind farm would rise up, both part of the same state energy policies that gave rise to the New Britain project.

It extends to Hartford, where Stanley is building an innovation center and startup accelerator for advanced manufacturing in space once occupied by the old Connecticut Bank & Trust Co.; and back to Fairfield County, the source of investment money for new firms, or so the drivers of this ecosystem hope.

The data center location, in the same complex of Stanley hardware buildings, happens to sit at the hub of a statewide network of super-high-speed fiber-optic data cable owned by the Connecticut Education Network, largely built using federal dollars coming out of the Great Recession. It connects to New York, Boston and Holyoke, Mass., site of a giant data center created by people who saw the need before we did.

“This has the potential to begin the revitalization of Connecticut's economy,” said University of Connecticut economist Fred V. Carstensen, who has been advocating for the fuel cell-data center complex for years.

“Enormous low cost power & high speed connectivity — may now be realized,” Carstensen said in an email. “Potentially a real game changer for Connecticut!!”

Data centers don’t employ a lot of people, not directly, anyway, but Carstensen and others say they’re a magnet for the types of companies we all want to see — genomics, advanced manufacturing, finance and insurance technology, drug development and so forth.

This proposed data center owes its start to a hydroelectric generator along a dam on the Farmington River in Windsor, built in the earliest days of electric power in the late 1800s. Stanley bought that complex in 1917, rebuilt it in 1925 and made it part of a mini power company — The Farmington River Power Co. — which still generates power today and is still owned by Stanley.

As it happens, the switching station and other transmission and distribution assets, back in New Britain, are just what the data center and fuel cell plant — known as Energy Innovation Park — need.

“Because of Stanley’s foresight,” said Mark

Wick, a Redding resident and partner of EIP LLC, the developer, “we were able to locate very cost effectively.”

The fuel cell plant, using equipment from Doosan, in South Windsor, is one of four fuel cell projects chosen this month, totaling 50 megawatts. Danbury based FuelCell Energy Inc. would build a 14.8 - megawatter in Derby, a project that promises to restore FuelCell’s place in its home state energy plan, 18 months after disappointment led to layoffs.

Under that same plan, DEEP also approved a 200-megawatt wind project, Connecticut’s first foray into offshore wind, which will bring assembly and construction jobs to New London.

On Wednesday, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, DEEP Commissioner Rob Klee and others in the state’s energy establishment celebrated a sweeping law adopted last month by the General Assembly, which advances some of the clean-energy goals and supports technology development.

Four hours earlier on a different floor of the same building — the Connecticut Science Center —

James Loree, the Stanley Black & Decker CEO and other company and civic officials celebrated their role in the region’s tech development.

“Connecticut is very important to Stanley Black & Decker and me,” said Loree, who had an awakening about just how sluggish the state has been when he served on the Connecticut Commission on Fiscal Sustainability and Economic Growth over the winter.

Loree talked about the “incredible disruptive potential” of additive manufacturing. He’d rather disrupt than be disrupted, so Stanley’s innovation center — dubbed Manufactory

4.0, a nod to history — will host ten additive startup firms from around the world this summer and fall.

“We need capital formation in Connecticut,” Loree

said, adding that Fairfield County, especially Stamford, is the environment where venture capital can flourish and support state enterprises.

That Stanley accelerator, still under construction, will be run by Techstars, a very youthful Boulder, Col.-based firm that has 42 accelerators. Frank Alfano, senior vice president of sales and a longtime Greenwich resident, said, without irony, “Connecticut has the potential because the cost of living is somewhat affordable comparatively.”

Alfano said the firm, whose chief operating officer, Jenny Lawton, lives in Easton, looked at Fairfield County but planted in Hartford because of the Stanley connection.

Connection is the word. It’s easy to fail and we’ve seen that aplenty. To actually work, these connections have to spark across the state, including government policies that advance the ball. Do we have it yet? Too soon to say.

“It may look incremental, each individual piece,” said Mary Sotos, a deputy commissioner at DEEP, referring to the energy pieces. She added, “I think we’re truly implementing a competitive energy strategy.”