Big News: American Made Network Announces H-Shot Incubator Prize Winners
Three Out of the Four Winning Teams Leveraged Our Experience!
When the finalists for the H-Prize: Hydrogen Shot Incubator were announced last week, we learned that the four finalists included all three of the teams that we actively supported by sharing the RLC framework with them!
All three of these teams were selected as Phase Two winners, meaning that we supported 75% of the winning teams. They each receive $100,000 in non-dilutive grant funding, and $300,000 in vouchers to use at the National Labs for research services.
The H-Prize is an American Made Network Challenge
H-Prize: Hydrogen Shot Incubator is a $2.6 million program to help optimize novel technologies that show the potential to produce clean, affordable hydrogen. This competition is an American Made Network challenge sponsored by the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) and Fuel Cell Technologies Office (HFTO), and seeks to attract new talent and expertise to the hydrogen industry who have not engaged with the DOE before.
Entrepreneurs and inventors developing low-cost green hydrogen compete for cash prizes, vouchers, and opportunities to work with experts to help accelerate the development of their concepts and improve the opportunity for transformative and disruptive technology.
I Was One of the Experts Approved to Support These Teams
When the Phase One winners were announced back in October of 2022, I reached out to all of them, offering to run a short Rapid Learning Cycles workshop. Three teams accepted my offer for an introduction to Rapid Learning Cycles:
PAX Scientific from Richmond, CA: Development of a water purification system to enable use of high-salinity or non-potable water for electrolysis, without the need for expensive reverse-osmosis membranes.
NX Fuels from Ann Arbor, MI: Development of solar-hydrogen device using low-cost, industry-ready materials.
Electro-Active Technologies from Knoxville, TN: Integration of solar technologies, algae, and microbial electrolysis for hydrogen production from waste.
The Two Phases of the H-Shot Competition
Competitors submitted applications for Phase One, the Propose! Phase. Each submission needed to include:
Estimated assessment of life cycle emissions
A brief explanation of technology
Details on how the concept is transformative in the cost of clean hydrogen production
Proposed path to concept validation
Up to 10 competitors would be selected by the DOE to be awarded $10,000 in cash and $50,000 in vouchers, redeemable at a national laboratory of their choice to further develop and refine their technology.
There were 9 successful submissions that passed from the Propose! Phase to the Prove! Phase. To win this second Phase, the competitors needed to submit:
Description of the concept, with details on work completed in the Propose! Phase.
Plan or preliminary design for a laboratory-scale proof-of-concept, including validation strategy.
Initial best projections for cost and emissions based on current understanding of the technology.
What The Teams We Supported Said About Working with Rapid Learning Cycles
Last year, we asked the teams to share their experiences with the Dept of Energy for a grant submission of our own.
Here’s what they said:
Katherine Radeka reached out to us after we won the first phase of the H-Shot Incubator Prize and offered her assistance.
She met with my team virtually to introduce us to the concepts of Rapid Learning Cycles and helped us put together a planning board. She has an understanding of the right amount of structure that a team like ours needs: a little, but not too much. My team has continued to use the board we put together to help us understand the flow of our work.
Saemon Choi, NX Fuels
Katherine Radeka reached out to offer her assistance after we won the first phase of the Hydrogen Shot Incubator Prize. After providing introductory material by webinar, she spent a day in our lab, working with the team. It was not enough time and support for us to master Rapid Learning Cycles (RLCs), but we continue to use the language she introduced. I’ve managed engineering teams for 25 years and can say with confidence — that’s a remarkable outcome from one working session.
Francesca Bertone, PAX Scientific
We are so thrilled to see these teams achieve this success and we will continue to support them through their next phase of work.
Rapid Learning Cycles Works to Accelerate Early Stage Climate Tech Research
These early phases are all about learning as much as possible as fast as possible. If your idea isn’t feasible, you want to know right away. And if it is, you want to make sure that you make good decisions that help you avoid preventable failures.
Established company R&D labs have systems and processes to avoid these failures, with vendor and partner relationships to leverage. These teams have none of that infrastructure behind them.
They are working at the earliest stages of development with very small teams and not much money or resources. Rapid Learning Cycles helped clarify the path forward to make the most of the time and money they had to achieve the best outcome.
The structure of the competition made this even more important.