Caltech’s Resnick Sustainability Institute Students Wins 2nd Place in DOE Business Plan Competition

A team of students who worked with Caltech’s Resnick Sustainability Institute have won second place in the western finals of a recent DOE (Department of Energy) business plan competition, it was announced today.

Chai Energy is developing a mobile phone app for monitoring energy usage in the home. This has the potential of enabling consumers to understand and manage their energy usage in real time and lead to savings of both energy and money, according to a news statement.

Chai won $40,000 in the contest, which is called First Look West (FLoW). FLoW is a consortium of California Institute of Technology led by the Resnick Institute, University of Southern California and the UC Los Angeles and represents the Western Region of the DOE’s National Clean Energy Business Plan Competition (NCEBPC).

Chai was formed as a result of a group of California Institute of Technology (Caltech) students working together on a Resnick Sustainability Institute-sponsored team in the US Solar Decathlon, a competition focused on building the most creative and energy efficient solar house.

“During our project to build the most energy efficient solar house, we learned that a very basic energy problem exists in most households,” said Cole Hershkowitz, one of the founders of Chai.

“The majority of consumers don’t know where energy and money is being wasted in their homes,” Hershkowitz said. “But with insight into their usage and waste, they suddenly have much greater power to reduce them.”

The team is working with Southern California Edison, Digi International hardware, and UC Irvine researchers as key partners in a one hundred home pilot with the goal of launching the product later this year. Chai estimates a total addressable market of 200 million homeowners throughout the United States.

“Our goal is to enable transformational technology that can influence the future of sustainability,” said Neil Fromer, Executive Director of the Resnick Sustainability Institute. “By potentially empowering people in as many as 200 million households, a big impact is possible.”