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F3 Tech Accelerator awards $25K to EnergyLink3

The Maryland company developing battery technology was among five startups taking part in the program for agriculture, aquaculture and environmental technology.

From farm to market. Photo by PhotosTheArt on Unsplash

After five founders stepped up to pitch (virtually) during demo day this week, leaders of the F3 Tech Accelerator announced Boyds, Maryland-based EnergyLink3 as the winner of $25,000 in funding.

It capped a four-month program providing resources to the startups, who are working on problems in F3 Tech’s focus areas of agriculture, aquaculture and the environment.

The accelerator is an effort to prepare and support early-stage companies for investment from F3 Tech’s larger tech seed fund. It’s among the work of the Easton-based Eastern Shore Entrepreneurship Center to support early-stage companies.

EnergyLink3 develops lithium-ion battery storage and management systems, and believes the technology can have use both in rural areas and for defense. The company worked on speeding prototype development during the program, and was helped by access to an onsite 3D printer.

Chris Hlubb, the accelerator’s program director, noted it was the ability of EnergyLink3 to attract investors that made it stand out from the other four companies to judges from government, industry and a past winner of the F3 Tech Accelerator program. All of the companies were neck-and-neck in terms of their ability to find a problem, solution and then commercialize that solution for the marketplace, Hlubb said.

This year’s other finalists were:

  • ACTIVEcharge – A developer of self-powered wind turbine sensor technology which has recently completed its first pilot test in Talbot County. The company’s technology allows monitoring systems and sensors to use the kinetic energy of the blades to power them. It’s designed to reduce operational costs and downtime.
  • InventWood A University of Maryland College Park company that has developed the world’s strongest wood-derived materials for use in the construction and automotive industries. The company says its material, called MettleWood, has over 20 times the tensile strength of lumber and almost twice that of steel.
  • Solar Oysters– A provider of automated “floatovoltaic” oyster production systems, designed and built in Baltimore, that have the potential to produce oysters in 45 times less space than traditional farms, and filter up to 43 billion gallons of water per year.
  • Vand– A designer and manufacturer of innovative hyper-personalized water filtration systems focused on expanding small-scale hydroponics. It is based in Burlington, Vermont.
Donte Kirby is a 2020-2022 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation.
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