With more than $2 billion in DOE grants for battery technology announced last week, the capital-intensive business of building energy storage devices has been enjoying a bright spotlight lately. But entrepreneurs looking to break into the energy storage market have at least two alternatives for getting in on the action with relative speed and lower capital requirements: sell software and services to the emerging markets for electric vehicles and grid storage, or sell energy storage tech to existing markets, such as electronics or power tools, as a stepping stone to business in the emerging vehicle and smart grid markets.
Those are some of the suggestions we gleaned from interviews with energy investor Peter Wagner of Accel Partners and Dan Squiller, CEO of battery startup PowerGenix. We asked Squiller about why PowerGenix opted out of applying for one of those popular DOE grants, and spoke with Wagner about what Accel is looking for in potential energy storage investments for a deep-dive article for our subscription service, GigaOM Pro.
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