Lancey Energy Storage Team

2nd Place Winners of the Sustainable Society Startup Challenge

We are pleased to announce the Second Place Winners of the 2020 MIT Global Startup Workshop Sustainable Society Startup Challenge



Lancey Energy Storage

Three and a half years after its creation, our startup counts 30 employees today, all working toward the same goal: accelerating the energy transition and developing solutions to democratize local renewable energy production and consumption.

Core Team

Raphaël Meyer (CEO & Founder) is a very innovative PhD in thermal engineering, with a thousand ideas per second. He is always one step ahead, and is mainly in charge of representing the company all over the world with customers and financiers.

Gilles Moreau (CTO & Founder) is a battery expert who's very good at managing R&D projects and creating the first prototypes of our solution. He also has a strong ability to get public subisidies by knowing this process very well.

Jérémy Renard (CFO/COO – Partner) is a very experienced manager who has already proven records of turning innovation into a profitable business. He is in charge of Finance & Operations, and helping turn brilliant ideas into reality.

Other Team Members:

Olivier Gourdel – Sales Director
Marie Poulle – Marketing & Communications Director
Thierry Garrett – Chief Product Officer
Pierre Scheffler – IoT Product Lead Developer
Adrian Tanghe – Mechanical Engineer
Jonathan Coignard (PhD) – Energy Management Engineer
Justine Aulert – Supply Chain Manager
Maxime Janvier – Data Engineer/Scientist
Morgane Mlynarczyk – Thermal Engineer
Sylvain Romion – Digital Electronic Lead Developer
Vincent Aulagnier – Power Electronic Lead Developer
Yohann Chatillon (PhD) – Li-ion Battery R&D & Manufacturing Lead Developer

About

Lancey is pioneering a new era for energy storage, an era in which home appliances can strongly support energy transition by storing electricity at home and engaging citizens to become active prosumers while reducing their electricity bill.

We aim to bring a qualitative electricity storage device in every home by integrating it into a space heater and sharing most of the electronic parts in a way that divides the storage cost by two. Our first product is the first electric smart heater with an embedded battery and energy management system.

Why is it a solution for a sustainable society?

With a CAPEX up to 3 times lower than a gas boiler/heat pump, it brings a solution for the millions of households in fuel poverty.

It participates in the energy transition by facilitating the domestic self-consumption of local renewable energies.

The central management of the batteries is key to enable a smart grid.

Our products will soon integrate a second-life battery from e-bikes.

Lancey is a 3-year-old company and relies on a young and enthusiastic team of 30 people based in Grenoble (Fr) and Montréal (Ca). Lancey Energy Storage received financial support from the EasyTech program of the IRT Nanoelec in 2019. Two communications modules (Wi-FI and KNX) were developed in the frame of this cooperation.

We have already installed 1,000 units in France, with 10 B2B clients in different regions of France and in different conditions (house/flat, new/renovation, with or without solar panels, tertiary building VS residential). The solution has proven significant energy bill reductions (up 50%), with a quick return on investment.

What is the main goal of your startup? What do you hope to achieve in France and/or the rest of the world?

Our goal is to deploy photovoltaics panel on top of every single house and to increase the efficiency of the main domestic uses of energy.

To achieve this deployment, we will propose a complete set of solutions allowing the management of the photovoltaics production in order to simplify the self-consumption and the local valorisation of this green and sustainable electricity.

We act on both sides of energy consumption to reduce greenhouse gas emissions:

On the other hand, we actively participate in the energy transition by tremendously facilitating the domestic self-consumption of renewable energies (e.g. from photovoltaics solar panels). Thus, our standard configuration of radiator (1 kWh of battery storage per radiator) allows a 100% of self-consumption ratio for France, the U.K., Germany, Benelux, Canada, etc.

Finally, the storage capacity of Lancey participates in the active equilibrium of the electric grid, which requires additional capacity to push the renewable energy content up to 100%.

Where did you get the inspiration for your idea?

Lancey’s project comes from Raphaël Meyer’s idea of combining a battery with an electric radiator to democratize batteries in France in order to foster the energy transition. Raphaël presented this idea for the first time in 2014 and soon met Gilles Moreau, a battery specialist leading an R&D project in this field. In 2015, they joined forces with Hervé Ory, a serial entrepreneur who had already created several successful companies. After applying for the first patents of the company, they create Lancey Energy Storage in 2016.

We named the company Lancey after a small village near Grenoble where hydroelectric energy has been invented by Aristide Bergès at the beginning of the previous century. So far, this is a simplest and greenest energy ever produced. One of our main drivers is therefore "Energy transition for all."

What is your proudest startup accomplishment to date?

We are especially proud of having deployed our first solution (i.e. one of the most advanced heating systems in the world) into social landlord's dwellings. It is quite logical as we want it to become a universal product, everywhere and beneficial to all. But this pretty challenging proof of concept has also allowed to avoid technological biases, which can be met with tech-friendly early adopters.

Based on our return on experiments, we could convince the jury of the CTA Association (organizing the CES in Las Vegas) to award us with a Best of Innovation in 2018. It provided us with great international exposure for our solutions, but also for this strong obstacle to energy transition, which is the fuel poverty.

What are the biggest challenges you anticipate in the future?

We will have to follow a fast growth phase, simultaneously in France and North America, while keeping a strong team that's motivated and focused on the objectives. We think that our vision will guide our team through all the milestones necessary first to break-even and then to scale-up.

We are developing our activity at the cross-section of the electricity sector and building sector. Those two sectors are considered as relatively conservative. We consider that establishing different partnerships with strong players among those players will act as a passport.

Finally, this ambitious development will require at least one more round of fundraising. We hope that the current crisis will not change the appetite of investment funds for projects that make sense.

What do you plan to do next?

First, we must pass the coronavirus crisis.

Secondly, we must pass the industrial scale production of our solution for self-consumption of photovoltaics energy.

Thirdly, we will launch our 100% as a service offer in order to allow to anyone around the globe to access our solution.

Once proven in the domestic market, we will prepare the required steps for an international deployment of this offer.

How has MIT GSW helped you in advancing in your goals?

As an ambitious, but still young company, we need recognition from experts of the field on the strengths of both our team and business model.

As a very prestigious award, MIT GSW will help us in establishing our name among the initiatives for energy transition.

Finally, during this period, any good news is a tremendous help for the teams.

Watch all the pitches from MIT GSW Competition Finalists on our YouTube channel.