Enerdrape's geo-thermal panels take home first place
© 2021 Enerdrape
EPFL spin-off Enerdrape has developed geo-thermal panels to supply energy to buildings. The company won first place in the 10th annual Startup Champions Seed Night this past Thursday.
Enerdrape’s panels can be installed in underground structures like parking lots, tunnels and subway stations as a source of renewable energy. The company’s name is a portmanteau of energy and drape, in that its system works like a piece of cloth that captures heat.
Its victory at the 10th Startup Champions Seed Night on Thursday was a nice achievement, “in part because I was the only female finalist, but mostly because ours is a cleantech firm,” says Margaux Peltier, Enerdrape co-founder and CEO. The Seed Night is held jointly every year by EPFL and Venturelab and pits around 20 Swiss startups against each other from a range of industries, including medtech and biopharma.
The technology developed by Vaud-based Enerdrape turns underground structures into clean energy sources for the heating and cooling systems of the buildings above them. Its panels measure 120 x 60 cm and can be placed in several layers, like a sandwich, on water pipes. “We’ve already set up a prototype at EPFL, and in the next few months we’ll install around 20 panels for a pilot test in a Lausanne parking lot,” says Peltier.
The panels are prefabricated and convert underground surfaces into heat exchangers. According to Peltier, this renewable energy system “will ultimately be manufactured on the same continent where it’s sold. That’s our goal, so that the reduction in CO2 emissions achieved by using our panels isn’t wiped out by the emissions from producing and shipping them.”
Enerdrape was created at EPFL’s Laboratory of Soil Mechanics in 2021. Its technology leverages the know-how of several experts including Prof. Lyesse Laloui in geothermal energy, Dr. Alessandro Rotta Loria in geothermal systems, and Peltier herself, who completed her Master’s project on energy-production systems for tunnels. “We saw that existing technology is suitable only for new buildings,” says Peltier. “It doesn’t let building owners make use of their existing underground structures.”
The company’s win on Thursday wasn’t its first. It was selected for a BRIDGE Proof of Concept grant from Innosuisse and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) last September, and it has received startup funding from EPFL’s Enable program, ENAC’s InnoSeed program, the ClimateLaunchpad, Climate-KIC and Venture Kick. Taken together, the firm – with its five-member team – has already received over CHF 350,000 in funding. It plans to carry out a seed fundraising round in a few months and will use the proceeds “to move out of the lab by the end of the year,” says Peltier.