Elzara Kadyrova, representative of Lead Partner, InnoEnergy GmbH and project coordinator of Danube Energy+, attended the Energy Business Camp that took place from 24.-28.07.2019 in the Karlsruhe region. The aim of this event was to inspire young innovators by innovative ideas, to let them learn from energy and business experts, to enable them making new contacts and to  gain valuable insights into the latest developments in the energy industry. In the framework of the Energy Business Camp InnoEnergy organized the 2nd Regional Networking Thursday event in order to present the Danube Energy+ Tool to the participants and guests.

The Energy Business Camp focused on following types of participants:

• InnoEnergy Master’s students and accepted candidates for 2019 intake
• Prospective master students considering an energy related programme in 2020
• Current (or graduated) Bachelor students studying a technical programme

This event was co-organised with AXEL which is the energy business accelerator located in the heart of the energy centre in the Karlsruhe Technology Region, Germany. AXEL supports early-stage energy start-ups and visionaries with pioneering energy technologies with business creation and acceleration of market-ready strategies. AXEL is also an active member of the Danube Energy+ Regional Alliance.

Attendees of this event came from 14 countries, worldwide, and presented their innovative energy-related ideas to other innovators, but also to business angels and investors.

On day 1, after the reception and welcome, the participants had the chance to meet their fellow participants as well as energy experts and mentors from the vibrant start-up community of Karlsruhe and to pitch their innovative energy project idea. In total 20 ideas were presented and as the result of an online voting the 4 highest ranked ones were selected to be worked on during the coaching and workshop sessions on following days.The rest of the participants joined one of those 4 “best” ideas to form a crossfunctional  team and jointly develop the idea into a business model.

The best 4 concepts were:

• Charge.on:The web based application aiming to be a match maker between the e-cars and private or business charging stations owners in order to enable a decentralized charnging infrastructure
• Methanol production (+ CO2 capture) : the idea behind this concept is transforming  the methanol and CO2 produced by the industry into energy and thus reducing CO2 emission along with energy (cost) efficiency
• Sustainable Hydrogen Infrastructure with zero Emission (SHINE): the main idea isproducing biogas based hydrogen for industry purposes
• Lights off:  awe based application that enables monitoring and evaulation of the energy consumtptions to actively reduce the consumption and costs by switching off devices based on the app recommendations

On day 2, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) took the lead and arranged two working sessions and coaching slots. While the latter one focused on providing the participants insights into Energy Entrepreneurship and characteristics of successful entrepreneurs addressing energy challenges, the working sessions focused on value proposition and business modelling. The participants had the opportunity to put their ideas to the test and work with their teams to explore all the angles, find the flaws, pursue new lines of innovation and finally to develop their energy business model which received feedback by energy experts. The working day was closed with an inspiration talk “The Energy Transition and its Importance for a Sustainable Future” by Dr.-Ing. Gerhard Weissmüller, CEO of DEEon Energie GmbH and honorary professor at KIT. 

On day 3, the Energy Business Camp participants had the chance to explore the Karlsuhe Energy Hub of which InnoEnergy and consequently also the Danube Energy+ project are important parts. After the visit to the Fraunhofer Insitute for Chemical Technology, the participants met at the Karlsruhe Windmühlenberg (called Energieberg (energy mountain)). The Energieberg is a 60 m high former landfill (landfill west) in Karlsruhe. The nickname Energieberg was chosen because three wind turbines, a photovoltaic system and two combined heat and power plants generate electricity and heat on this hill. The last stop was at the KIT, where the Danube Energy+ project was presented as the current young innovators support project at InnoEnergy.

During the weekend, the participants of the Energy Business Camp learned how to communicate their message effectively and efficiently in order to involve their clients and stakeholders in their innovation activities. The learned contents where applied in working sessions in which the participants received feedback on their presentation skills and pitches.

July 28th was the closure day where all elaborated team projects were presented and a winner was voted. Elzara Kadyrova was part of the award committee and voted/evaulated the progress the teams have done so far together with other regional key stake holders such as Prof. Gerhard Weissmüller from DEEnO, Jonathan van der Kamp from EIFER research centre, Michael Schön from fokus.energie and Pascal Ruisinger from BRC Solar GmbH. The evaluation criteria included following characteristics:

• Innovation/USP
• Market potential
• Business model
• Presentation

The winner team- Charge.on- convinced the juri with a very good pitch and won the 1st prize which was a set of tickets for all team members for Formula E runs in 2020.