California Test Bed Initiative
California Clean Energy Fund dba CalCEF Ventures
Recipient
Berkeley, CA
Recipient Location
7th
Senate District
14th
Assembly District
$11,358,591
Amount Spent
Active
Project Status
Project Update
By the end of 2024, the 4th cohort of 12 CalTestBed voucher recipients initiated third-party testing of their innovative clean energy prototypes. The diverse cohort was composed of companies covering five technology categories including transportation, energy efficiency, and grid technology.
The California Testbed Initiative (CalTestBed) is made possible by a $22 million grant from the California Energy Commission (CEC) Electric Program Investment Charge and is administered by New Energy Nexus. Since the start of the program, over 60 entrepreneurs across four cohorts have been awarded vouchers worth over $17M (including UC match) for third party testing. The latest "CalTestBed at a Glance" report from the end of 2024 shows that awardees have made significant progress, securing over $416M in follow-on funding and generating over 300 new jobs. The employment opportunities included roles within the research facilities and growth within the awarded startups. The CEC funding has enabled continuous program improvement, such as streamlining contracting and program administration across all participating campuses.
The Issue
In California, clean energy entrepreneurs and innovators experience significant difficulty making the leap from prototype to pilot scale demonstration of their technologies because they lack access to facilities and services to test and de-risk their products' design, safety, and performance, and they lack technical feedback to shift product specifications to meet the requirements of potential customers. Entrepreneurs are also concerned about protecting their intellectual property and proprietary information as they approach commercialization of their innovations. This program provides access to world-class testing facilities with mechanisms in place to allow the innovator to maintain control of their IP.
Project Innovation
This project has developed and implemented a voucher program to provide clean energy companies access to world-class facilities to test and de-risk prototypes of pre-commercial distributed energy resource technologies across 10 technology categories, and to provide the data they need to refine their innovation to meet customer specifications. In its fourth year of operation, this project has more than doubled the initial network of 29 testing facilities to more than 70 located at nine University of California campuses and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. The implementation team intends to continue to grow this network should there be another renewal of the program. This robust network connects testing facilities throughout California in order to serve clean energy start-ups more efficiently and effectively, and the structure for cross-campus collaboration and public-private partnerships has been identified as a best practice that could be replicated across other sectors, such as healthcare. The CalTestBed team continues to build a national network of Next Level Partners including investors, pilot/demonstration partners, government agencies and other accelerator programs that can provide further support to voucher recipients as they complete their testing and progress closer to commercialization. These next level partners are convened during the national CalTestBed symposium intended to provide voucher recipients with exposure and connection to opportunities.
Project Goals
Project Benefits
CalTestBed will accelerate new, clean, energy-efficient technologies to market and, as a result, help voucher recipients grow, secure additional investment and follow-on funding, create new jobs, develop pilot and demonstration partnerships, and deploy their technologies to benefit the ratepayers of California through increased reliability, lower costs, and greater safety. CalTestBed is implemented with the intention of utilizing an equity in, equity out model to maximize the social, environmental, and economic benefits for communities throughout the state.
CalTestBed also provides benefits to California by strengthening the state's clean energy innovation ecosystem through organizing the collaborative network of more than 70 world-class testing facilities, documenting the testing capabilities in the CalTestBed Facilities Directory, supporting the work of scientists and graduate students, and creating efficient utilization of state-owned assets.
Reliability
CalTestBed will provide third-party testing to entrepreneurs so they can test their prototypes' performance under various conditions, refine their product, and have accurate data to share with potential partners and customers.
Economic Development
CalTestBed will provide objective feedback to help entrepreneurs improve their products to meet customer needs, and grow into self-sustaining businesses, creating economic and employment opportunities throughout the state.
Safety
CalTestBed provides third-party testing data to innovators that is critical in determining the safety of their products. That data can then serve as compelling evidence to potential pilot partners, investors, and customers.
Key Project Members
Rebecca Lee
Roshni Nedungadi
Charles Simms
Subrecipients
Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator
Build Momentum (d.b.a. Momentum)
Match Partners
California Clean Energy Fund dba CalCEF Ventures
University of California, Office of the President
