Drexel boasts tech, with smart grid system and incubator entrants

The City Six school with the computer science cred boasted its tech influence from two different places in big ways in recent weeks.
Drexel University is planning on deploying a smart grid system that will provide real-time measurements of location-specific energy outputs across its 65-acre campus in University City, as reported by inTech yesterday. The real-time pricing technology, which will come from Conshohocken-based Viridity Energy, will give Drexel the wherewithal to purchase power at low-demand times of the day and sell excess power back to the general power grid for profit.
That bit of news followed an announcement from the school’s LeBow College of Business that three new startups were welcomed into its Baiada Center for Entrepreneurship business incubator, all with a touch of technology. The three new entrants are Ranter, a social-networking tool that allows users to text groups; Konnect.me, a business-to-business Web portal and Stabiliz Orthopaedics, which is developing bone fasteners with bio-absorbable materials, as first reported by Mike Armstrong of the Inquirer.
Those companies crashing at LeBow’s incubator will be in decidedly more energy efficient digs once the university gets its smart grid system up and running, it boasts.
The technology from Veridity, called “virtual generation,” is said to give customers the chance to develop independence from the public grid by storing and dealing power. The grid reduces energy waste by using computer monitoring instead of a switch to allocate energy resources by use.
“Drexel has a long-standing commitment to apply the University’s technical and research capabilities to solving challenges in our communities. One of the greatest challenges we face today is the ability to meet current and future power demand through investment in clean and distributed energy resources,” interim University President C.R. “Chuck” Pennoni told inTech.
The new incubator bunkmates — who join 15 other businesses housed at Baiada by Armstrong’s count — all won a competition to earn the space, in addition to seed money, including the $12,000 awarded to Stabiliz.
The 20-something principals behind the Ranter texting tool seemed to catch Armstrong’s fancy — highlighting the crush of Drexel’s recent Web news.
Ranter will have a beta version of what Armstrong called a “would-be Twitter killer,” in three months.