The ElectricFish roadmap to mobile microgrids

This is the second in a two-part series about the Department of Energy’s Cradle to Commerce program. The first part was a feature on the shifting landscape of national labs, linked here. 

The ElectricFish founding story starts like that of many other tech startups: at a hackathon. And, like many other tech startup products, ElectricFish’s battery-integrated electric vehicle fast charger has passed through several iterations and target markets.

But in the last year the company has notched an unusual win that it hopes will set it apart: inking a deal to use a printed circuit board developed at Argonne National Lab in their chargers, both unlocking bidirectional charging and reducing manufacturing costs.

ElectricFish is one of a handful of startups granted access to national lab IP through the Department of Energy’s Cradle to Commerce Program, which pairs entrepreneurs with tech innovations that have been developed and de-risked at labs around the country, in order to get them to market more quickly.

Co-founder and COO Vince Wong said the company was slightly more established than others in its cohort, given that he and his co-founders had already raised two seed rounds, been awarded a handful of grants, and even started to sign its first commercial deals. But the access to Argonne IP has helped to fast-track capabilities that would have taken years to develop in-house. 

“They’ve developed a system that allows charging infrastructure equipment to communicate more seamlessly and basically enhance interoperability with the grid,” Wong said.

Licensing Argonne’s tech will bring down both production and manufacturing costs, in part because the company is currently sourcing circuit boards from a third-party. The agreement with Argonne to use the IP is non-exclusive, but the implementation is unique to ElectricFish’s systems and product, and is a major boost for the company’s operations, Wong said. 

“Being able to bring those learnings and the implementation in-house will be transformative,” he added.

The tech so far

As Wong describes them, ElectricFish’s mobile charging stations, currently around the size of a standard parking spot, also double as microgrids. The system is designed to take in AC power from the grid at a lower voltage, then convert it to a voltage high enough for fast EV charging. 

That’s particularly useful for potential C&I customers, he added, who are converting fleets to EVs that require more power than is currently available at their existing sites. That conversion has the potential to avoid grid updates in many cases.

With the help of Argonne’s IP, ElectricFish will in theory not only be able to maintain charging during grid outages, but also send energy back to the grid. It is those capabilities that the company will be testing with Idaho National Lab, via a cooperative research and development agreement facilitated through the Cradle to Commerce program. 

Later this year the team will set up one of its chargers for rigorous testing not of its EV charging prowess, but of its microgrid capabilities, and how the charger itself can interact with the grid. Eventually, Wong said, they’ll be testing the impact of a “network” of ElectricFish chargers on a local grid.

“The notion of virtual power plants, which are really gaining steam: that is really where this goes eventually,” he said. “We’re going to complement the centralized infrastructure model with a decentralized system of energy assets which are responsive and flexible.”

ElectricFish initially planned to deploy public charging modules at gas stations. But the company quickly realized that commercial customers represented a better market with a higher budget — and one that investors were more likely to warm to.

Wong said that the company’s initial pilot, on the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power campus in early 2022, acted as the “spark that ignited interest from utilities and customers who wanted to pilot our technology.”

An early 2023 pilot in Detroit helped demonstrate the module’s time of use shifting capabilities. Another pilot, in cooperation with Con Edison and the National Park Service, was deployed last summer in Brooklyn, and was actually bid into the utility’s demand response programs (with a perfect response record over the course of the summer, Wong reported).

Today, ElectricFish is “more or less out of the R&D phase,” said Wong, in part thanks to the national labs.

After closing their first commercial-scale sale in March — and with a “single digit pipeline” of additional signed deals — the company unveiled a manufacturing facility in California in mid-June, funded in part by a grant from the California Energy Commission.

Ironing out the capital stack

In total, ElectricFish has raised around $3.6 million between dilutive and non-dilutive funding. The company is in the midst of raising a seed round, which Wong expects to close later this year. 

The priority for the round will be addressing manufacturing and labor costs, Wong said, and will ideally be backed by funds with “significant e-mobility experience.”

That said, ElectricFish is still working to figure out the type of capital stack it will need in the long-term. That’s largely because they hope to offer various business models, such as a leasing model versus a licensing one. 

However, based on their current pipeline, Wong said he ultimately expects the company to seek out less equity (though equity partners with utility sector experience will be key) and more energy-focused debt. 

In the meantime though, ElectricFish has found great success in the world of grants, primarily state grants, and now has its sights set on federal funding opportunities.

“Something we’d love to tackle in the future is the Loan Programs Office,” Wong said. “We’re not near that just yet, but we see a trajectory to get there.”