infiniRel is a Clean-IT start-up, developing Smart Sensor Technology to monitor the health of green power used in solar, wind and electric vehicle applications. Today, performance monitoring platforms in the renewable energy market do not have the capability to proactively identify pending power electronics failure. Sandia National Laboratories reported that "59% of all unexpected maintenance costs of photovoltaic solar plants are due to inverter failure", costing the renewable energy industry Billions of Dollars. Inverters are mission-critical power electronic units at the heart of a solar plant, which transform power from the panels or wind turbine, to power accepted by our grid.
Our proprietary, patent-pending signal-processing technology assures energy reliability by predicting power electronics' service life. Operating at only $0.001/kWh of profit margin, Energy Service Providers can potentially quadruple operating profit by planned maintenance, reducing unscheduled emergency service calls through preventative, Condition-Based Maintenance. Unlike conventional performance monitoring products, the infiniRel solution installs non-intrusively and is vendor agnostic, identifying and reporting potential problems before they occur.
The Served Addressable Market is estimated at over $2B market for performance monitoring in photo-voltaic solar and gear-less wind turbine markets today, expected to more than double by 2015. Our solution addresses 20% of large commercial photo-voltaic solar, 90% of the utility-scale solar, and 14% of wind energy applications.
We initially sell our enterprise software service solution to Renewable Energy Service Providers and OEMs, providing the company with a recurring revenue stream for 5 to 25 years, while the solution is adapted to other energy verticals. The company has received a signed Letter of Intent from a leading German solar firm, which allow it to access 15% of the European solar market.
We have developed a working prototype with $110 in personal investments and raised $100,000 of external funds. With the next investment of $300k we can complete production design and start field validation at Sandia National Laboratories and two identified customer sites. First revenues from a limited feature, handheld, version is expected in early 2011 with additional technology licensing revenues possible.
The two full-time members of the management team from Texas Instruments bring 17 and 34 years of domain expertise in power electronics, software development, IP management to the firm, the Co-founder and Board member 35 years of executive operations. All had start-up experience, including a Board observer role at Virtio. A former Senior Member Technical Staff from TI advises the firm, holds a PhD in Mathematics and has 6 patents to his name.
