North Carolina company’s move to Bakersfield advances local push for tech jobs | News
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Bakersfield’s efforts to become a center of energy innovation have attracted a North Carolina company developing battery-charging technology that could one day serve California’s goal of better connecting electric vehicles to the state power grid.
SineWatts Inc.’s work on power inverters and electronics design have won it a series of U.S. Department of Energy grants totaling $1.62 million. State officials are considering providing additional subsidies in hopes the company’s technology will help California transition away from internal-combustion cars and trucks.
For Bakersfield, which has signed a $150,000 deal that brings the company from Charlotte to California Avenue, SineWatts represents the most significant success to date in a campaign to cultivate a local startup culture with the potential to support a high-tech local workforce.
“The decision by SineWatts to relocate to Bakersfield is a demonstration that Bakersfield is an innovative place to do business,” city spokesman Eric Galvan said by email. He added that, as part of the agreement, the city will help the company develop partnerships that will “provide real life application to their technology,” while SineWatts helps identify strategies for attracting other tech companies to the city.
There’s an expectation SineWatts will eventually take up residence at Cal State Bakersfield, possibly inside an $83 million energy innovation center proposed for construction on the university’s campus. Such a move would advance a local economic and workforce development push to cement Kern’s growing reputation as a hub of energy innovation, potentially helping replace some of the jobs lost as the Newsom administration looks to phase out the county’s oil and gas industry.
CSUB said it is thrilled visionary companies are interested in developing job-producing, sustainable technologies in Kern.
“In partnership with the city of Bakersfield, we look forward to hearing more about SineWatts’ promising research and plans to increase efficiency as CSUB continues our mission to bring together all voices and expertise in the conversation on energy,” Kristen Beall Watson, the chief of staff to the university’s president, said in a statement.
Early work on SineWatts’ technology was done in Palo Alto in 2011; the company has since received patents on a series of inventions related to charging and discharging batteries. Its first DOE award, in 2013, came with $500,000, followed two years later by a $1 million award from the same agency.
SineWatts is working on a demonstration of its technology that the company expects will take a year and a half to two years to complete. After that, it hopes to begin local manufacture of a golf cart-like electric vehicle that would double as a mobile battery capable of powering an entire home. Ultimately, the idea is to work with other vehicle manufacturers to aid the rollout of electric vehicles.
“We’re forming a new market,” company spokesman Les Mood said. “We call them power plants on wheels.”
The company says its technology is uniquely miniaturized and, in at least that way, superior to the equipment in Ford Motor Co.’s electric truck, F-150 Lightning, which also provides bidirectional energy, taking or giving a charge. Mood said vehicles equipped with SineWatts’ weight-efficient technology will connect more simply with sources of electricity, which could lower costs and speed the buildout of electric vehicle charging infrastructure.
President and CEO Shibashis “Shiba” Bhowmik said by email, “When fully developed, the SineWatts solution solves many challenges with one fell swoop: California’s troubles with the electric grid as we bring on more renewables, the pains of scaling and deploying the charging infrastructure for EVs, and the energy storage requirement on the distribution network for buildings.”
A state law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in October 2019 codified California’s interest in having electric vehicles serve the state power grid. Besides requiring the California Public Utilities Commission to establish electric vehicle-to-grid integration, Senate Bill 676 calls on local, publicly owned electric utilities to consider strategies for such integration.
The Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development started talking with SineWatts early last year during an event convened by the California Energy Commission. State officials were drawn to the company because of its leadership in battery innovation and what that could do to advance the state’s climate goals, GoBiz Community-Based Solutions Supervisor Derek Kirk said.
California hasn’t yet contributed financially to SineWatts, but state officials are considering it, Kirk added. It’s not the first or the biggest startup recruitment GoBiz has done, but it’s a good example of how economic development should happen in the state going forward, he said.
Mood said the company views Bakersfield as positioned to be a great place for manufacturing because of its availability of land and engineers. He said there’s the potential for SineWatts to create thousands of research, engineering and development jobs in the next few years.
About 30 engineers are working to refine the company’s technology now, he said, even as the company currently has only three full-time employees, not counting its many advisers. He added the company’s move to Bakersfield is expected to be complete in September.
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