Europe in sights of Maritime energy-conservation company

Following a funding announcement from two local investment groups, Stash Energy is looking to expand into international markets.

The Fredericton-based company was founded a few years ago by three graduates of the University of New Brunswick. This week New Brunswick Innovation Foundation and Island Capital Partners of P.E.I. announced they would invest $400,000 in Stash.

"It means a lot of things," said Stash chief product officer Daniel Larsen.

"It's going to allow us to continue to expand our manufacturing and supply chain. It's going to allow us to complete some pilots that we're doing with utility partners here in Canada. It's also going to allow us to expand to other Canadian provinces into New England and also hopefully into the European market."

Larsen, who is from Belfast, P.E.I., had the initial idea for the company. It was prompted by the news that Maritime Electric on P.E.I. was planning to build a major power plant to deal with peak power usage that might only operate 15 minutes a day.

Some of that peak power usage was coming from the increased use of heat exchangers. Larsen's idea was for a heat exchanger that would store energy in off-peak times, reducing the need during peak times.

In a smart power grid, where customers are charged less during off-peak times, people will save money in addition to reducing stress on the power grid.

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