- By NYS Governor's Office
- Business & Technology
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Last week Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced the launch of the New York Power Authority-Israel Smart Energy Challenge, a $2.5 million competition to attract Israeli companies with expertise in energy efficiency and clean energy generation to submit proposals to collaborate with New York's public utility on new clean energy technologies. The Governor is opening the challenge seeking Israeli companies that will advance power grid reliability, storage, sustainability and affordability, all of which benefit ratepayers, utilities and the environment.
"We have sent a message to the world that New York is open for business and based on our strong history of collaboration with innovative Israeli companies, this new competition will further diversify and grow our economy," Cuomo said. "Israeli companies are developing new technologies with the potential to take us into the next generation of resilient, renewable and affordable energy systems, and we look forward to building the new partnerships that will get us there, together."
To launch the NYPA-Israel Smart Energy Challenge, the Authority is working with the Israel Smart Energy Association. NYPA and ISEA will promote the competition among innovative Israeli firms that support next-generation electric vehicle technologies, electric grid reliability, energy storage and demand flexibility technologies. Several innovative companies will be identified and given the opportunity to work with NYPA, the largest state public utility in the U.S., to scale up their technology in pilot demonstration projects to meet the specific needs of power utilities operations.
The plan furthers the Governor's commitment to collaborate with Israel on economic development by tapping into its wealth of innovative firms with high-tech expertise, and advances New York's Green New Deal, a nation-leading clean energy and jobs agenda that will aggressively put New York State on a path to economy-wide carbon neutrality.
Head of NYPA-Israel Innovation Hub Doron Gover said, "NYPA's collaboration with Israeli's technology companies will yield mutual benefit by introducing new solutions for commercial usage in large scale electric utilities. The challenge will finance and enable pilot installation of innovative solutions in order to achieve significant advances in grid reliability, storage, sustainability and affordability."
The competition will focus on research areas centered around meeting digital utility challenges such as electric vehicle charging, distributed energy solutions, grid modernization, energy storage, microgrids, cybersecurity, blockchain and energy trading, buildings/campus energy management, data analytics, artificial intelligence, virtual reality and use of drones/autonomous robots in power systems.
Proposals will be evaluated based on their potential to save money, improve safety or operations, reduce maintenance, improve efficiency or save manpower or time. The solutions need to be viable, replicable and able to be commercialized.
This new competition is an addition to an ongoing series of relationships with Israeli businesses to advance technology pilots in support of NYPA's efforts to become a fully digital utility. mPrest, an Israeli provider of monitoring and control systems, developed a first-of-its-kind transmission monitoring system. After proof of concept and success with this system at NYPA's Niagara Power Plant and other facilities, the systems are now being replicated at other power systems all over the world. In another association, Israeli developer Brenmiller Energy is coordinating with NYPA to test the use of thermal energy storage with combined heat and power to increase system energy efficiency on a State University of New York campus.
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