Design Flux Technologies LLC (DFT) was one of the winners of the fifth annual Clean Energy Challenge. Design Flux won the ComEd Female Founder Prize and Clean Energy Prize Fund, which came with $75,000. The funding will go toward finishing the technology and R&D efforts for Design Flux's software-defined power management system. It makes a battery pack more efficient and extends battery life.
Called Cognicell™, Design Flux's technology consists of a four-technology-innovation ensemble: This software defined innovation significantly lowers costs, enhances safety, and minimizes maintenance of energy storage systems for OEMS. Specifically, it’s a versatile power management system implemented through software control algorithms combined with unobtrusive cell-level hardware, overseen by a custom real time operating system. It’s a smarter, smaller, safer way to install, maintain and manage stored energy.
"This new embedded solution will completely eliminate the need for traditional power electronics infrastructure in battery installations such as electric vehicles, micro grids, and grid storage by combining cell-level switching hardware with advanced software control algorithms," stated Courtney Gras, Chief Operating Officer with Design Flux Technologies. "This technology will significantly reduce design, installation and maintenance costs for OEMs/System Integrators, and will improve safety and efficiency in the battery installation."
"The company has successfully partnered with a Global Vehicle OEM and has been working on case studies and technology demonstrations with this partner for over one year to prove-out their value proposition in the market. DFT hopes to raise the funding necessary to complete their technology development within the next year and follow an incremental product-release plan which will ultimately lead to cost reduction and wide-spread adoption by OEMs and systems integrators," Gras concluded.
Design Flux is a spin-out company from the University of Akron, and was co-founded by two Electrical Engineering students in 2011. Frustrated with the complexity and discontinuity in energy storage systems, these two students surrounded themselves with a team of experienced business advisors, engineering professors, and other colleagues to formulate a new paradigm in power management. The result of these efforts was the conceptualization of Cognicell: the first software-defined solution to the complex power management ecosystem.
Three of the key features of this approach to software-defined power management include: Cognicell makes traditional power management components obsolete by eliminating the need for transformers, large, lossy switches and more. Cognicell adapts with the ever-changing grid and energy storage markets through software re-programming. This means Cognicell can be used with any battery chemistry, capacity, and quantity. And Cognicell is web-connected, so battery maintenance can be done remotely. Remote maintenance can be as simple as data-monitoring, or be as involved as isolating and mitigating a single-cell failure.
The Clean Energy Trust event, which took place in Chicago, pitted 14 “cleantech startups†from the Midwest against one another to compete for $1 million total in early stage investment financing. Eight companies won a total of 10 prizes.
Design Flux actually competed in the Clean Energy Challenge as a student team in 2012 and won a small amount of money, said chief operating officer and co-founder Courtney Gras. This new award comes at the perfect time to help Design Flux demonstrate its product in a customer application.
