the research consultancy for energy technologies

Company Diligence

  • Tigercat: forestry and timber innovations?

    Tigercat: forestry and timber innovations?

    Tigercat is a private company, founded in 1992, headquartered in Ontario, Canada, with c2,000 employees. The company produces specialized machinery for forestry, logging, materials processing and off-road equipment. Our patent review has found a moat around reliable, easy-to-maintain, mobile and efficient forestry equipment.

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  • Agilyx: plastic recycling breakthrough?

    Agilyx: plastic recycling breakthrough?

    This data-file is a review of Agilyx’s plastic recycling technology, after assessing the company’s patents on our usual framework. We conclude that Agilyx has developed a novel and data-driven process, to remove challenging contaminants from feedstocks. Although it may involve higher complexity, higher reagent opex, and some challenges cannot entirely be de-risked from the patents.

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  • Sentient Energy: smart grid breakthrough?

    Sentient Energy: smart grid breakthrough?

    This data-file is a technology review for Sentient Energy, assessing innovations in smart grids. Its technology can achieve energy savings via a combination of “Conservation Voltage Reduction” and “Volt-VAR optimization at the grid edge”. This also helps to integrate more solar and EV charging into power grids. We explain the technology.

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  • Powin: grid-scale battery breakthrough?

    Powin: grid-scale battery breakthrough?

    Powin commercializes energy storage hardware and software. Its LFP battery system is 30% more compact than peers, at 200 MWH/acre, and modular, meaning it may be 50% faster to install. Our patent review finds a moat around specific process improvements, to help back up the short-term volatility of solar and wind.

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  • X Energy: nuclear fuel breakthrough?

    X Energy: nuclear fuel breakthrough?

    X-Energy is a next-generation nuclear company, progressing a demonstration project in Washington State, due to start up in 2027. The key innovation is using TRISO fuels, whose manufacturing is locked up with a concentrated patent library. Long-term costs are suggested at 6c/kWh.

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  • Prysmian: power cable technology breakthroughs?

    Prysmian: power cable technology breakthroughs?

    Prysmian scores well on our patent assessment framework. We conclude an array of incremental improvements and industry specializations confer a partial moat and helps to de-risk future installation work.

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  • Nostromo: thermal energy storage breakthrough?

    Nostromo: thermal energy storage breakthrough?

    Nostromo is commercializing a thermal energy storage system, for commercial buildings in hot climates, where AC can comprise 40-70% of total energy use. It scores highly on our patent framework and can be an interesting alternative to lithium batteries.

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  • PureCycle: polypropylene recycling breakthrough?

    PureCycle: polypropylene recycling breakthrough?

    PureCycle was founded in 2015, went public via SPAC in 2021 and aims to recycle waste polypropylene into virgin-like polypropylene saving 79% of the usual input energy and 35% of the input CO2. Despite recent controversies, our PureCycle technology review is able to de-risk several ambitions.

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  • Aurubis: copper recycling breakthrough?

    Aurubis: copper recycling breakthrough?

    Aurubis produces copper products from 1MTpa of recycled materials and 2.25MTpa of concetrates. Energy use and CO2 emissions are two-thirds lower than primary copper production. Our technology review finds a partial moat.

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  • TerraPower: nuclear breakthrough?

    TerraPower: nuclear breakthrough?

    TerraPower is one of the most active next-generation nuclear companies, with funding from Bill Gates, and 600 engineers working towards the first, 345MWe Natrium reactor before 2030. We could not entirely de-risk a “breakthrough” due to the breadth and novelty of its patents.

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