Two Dartmouth-founded companies were announced this week as winners of the GE Ecomagination Challenge—one of the largest initiatives of its kind. IceCode LLC, founded by Professor Victor Petrenko, is one of five innovation award winners, and SustainX, Inc. is one of 12 new partners selected for investment by GE "to develop and commercialize technologies vital to helping build the next-generation power grid."
SustainX was founded by Professor Charles Hutchinson and three Dartmouth engineering Ph.D. graduates—Dax Kepshire Th'06, '09, Ben Bollinger '04 Th'04, '08, and Troy McBride Th'01—who are developing technology to compress and store air in a way that helps utilities optimize their use of alternative energy such as wind and solar power.
In its list of selected partners, GE describes SustainX as providing "isothermal, compressed-air energy storage technology to enable cost effective, grid-scale energy storage. SustainX's approach has the potential to be less than half the cost of traditional compressed-air energy storage. The technology presents opportunities for collaboration with GE's Global Research Center and commercial partnership opportunities with GE Energy to commercialize energy storage applications and to enable a higher percentage of renewable power generation in markets like Europe."
