THE NINEDOT METHOD
NineDot Energy is a laboratory for clean energy business model innovation.
Our hypothesis is that small market-based changes can spur big impacts in clean-tech diffusion. We study behavioral economics to create better customer value propositions, perform predictive analytics to reduce risks and costs, design financial instruments to allocate risk and align incentives, observe how regulations champion or hinder clean energy, and research nonobvious technology/market fits.
NineDot then tests our ideas by launching our own clean energy businesses in the marketplace. We partner with leading clean-tech equipment providers and financial investors to design first-of-their-kind projects. Each project is an experiment to measure real-world benefits to the environment, energy infrastructure, and end users. Throughout our development process, we refine our business models to make them scalable, bankable, and faster to implement.
Our first project is a shared, community energy business model in New York City. With Annadale Energy in Staten Island, NineDot seeks to demonstrate that guaranteed-savings virtual energy subscriptions transform markets and that power-dense clean-tech helps make urban utility grids more resilient and reliable. This business model is being scaled up at additional sites including a project in the Bronx.
NineDot was founded as CertainSolar in 2015. Our name derives from the classic mathematical puzzle for sparking out-of-the-box solutions.
NineDot has received generous financial support from the U.S. Department of Energy to research novel business models and the New York State Energy Research and Development Agency to develop community distributed generation projects. NineDot is based at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering Urban Future Lab in Brooklyn, New York.
FOCUS
AREAS
URBAN CLEAN-TECH
We tune our research and development to increase the accessibility and affordability of clean energy to residents and businesses in dense, urban locations.
SHARED ENERGY
Community-scale energy projects are our sweet spot. They are small enough to provide hyper-local power grid benefits and large enough to gain economies of scale.
LOWER SOFT COSTS
Soft costs are the non-hardware costs to build an energy project. They have an outsized role in project economics. We use science & tech innovation to reduce soft costs.
GUARANTEED SAVINGS
No-money-down, no-downside-risk contracts for clean energy changes how real-world consumers make decisions.
BETTER BANKABILITY
Quantifying and parsing financial risks can unlock significant new sources of capital for more clean energy development.
UTILITY RATE SCIENCE
Retail power prices are set by byzantine regulations layered upon a complex mix regional & global market dynamics. We untangle this mess.
DISTRIBUTED ENERGY
Distributed energy provide values to power grids. We target our projects to highly-stressed utility load areas where they will maximize impacts on higher reliability and resiliency.
CLEANER AIR
Clean-tech reduces global greenhouse gas emissions and local air pollutants. We measure impacts to the planet and the health of our neighbors.
NEW technologies
NineDot looks to partner with clean-tech providers:
- battery energy storage
- combined heat & power (CHP)
- micro-hydro
- fuel cells
- distributed wind
- biodigesters
NEW markets
NineDot creates and participates in new energy marketplaces:
- distributed energy resources
- shared & community power
- novel finance structures
- novel offtaker structures
- hybrid front-of-the-meter/behind-the-meter projects
new land uses
NineDot finds new high-value uses for old city infrastructure.
Do you have a sunny rooftop? Do you have unused space behind your building?
Let us check if you can host our next clean energy project!
OUR LEADERSHIP TEAM
NineDot is based out of the NYU Tandon School of Engineering Urban Future Lab in Downtown Brooklyn. UFL is New York City’s hub for smart cities, smart grid and clean energy.
ADAM COHEN, PHD CO-FOUNDER & CTO
Adam is a physicist who thinks of our energy system as a complex, interconnected experimental laboratory. He seeks to uncover small technical, financial, and regulatory improvements that will cause tipping points for clean energy diffusion. Prior to NineDot, Adam was Science Team Lead for Split Technology, a smart transportation start-up (acquired by Volkswagen Group). Adam was a post-doctoral fellow of the U.S. Department of Energy where he launched a new research program applying social and behavioral science to scale up solar energy adoption. He earned a PhD from the Chaos Group at University of Maryland and a BS in physics from Bucknell University.
DAVID ARFIN CO-FOUNDER & CEO
David is driven to create innovative finance offerings to accelerate the adoption of clean energy. David invented SolarCity's SolarLease®, the game-changing solar financing program. He received the first-ever Innovation in PV Financing Award from the Solar Energy Industry Association. David is a co-founder of Ener-Pacte (France) and SolarNGreen (Mexico). Prior to SolarCity, David was co-founder and CEO of GlooLabs (acquired by Cisco Systems), and was founder and CEO of CLE Group (acquired by PLI). He received an MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, an MA in Public Policy Analysis from the Claremont Graduate University, and a BA in Political Science from UCLA.
NALIN KULATILAKA, PHD CO-FOUNDER & ADVISOR
Nalin is Wing Tat Lee Family Professor of Management and Professor of Finance at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business where he also serves as the co-director of the Susilo Institute for Ethics in the Global Economy. Nalin’s current research interests include impact investing and financing distributed energy resources. Nalin has published extensively in top academic journals as well as influential managerial publications. His book, Real Options (HBS Press), has received wide acclaim. His honors include Bertil Danielson Chair (Stockholm School of Economics), Takang Chair (Tamkang University, Taipei), and the Association for Investment Management and Research's Graham and Dodd Award. He has co-founded several companies including FirstFuel Software (energy data analytics), and NineDot Energy (community distributed generation for congested urban grids). He serves on the Board of Directors of Assette. Nalin holds a PhD from MIT.
Our team was awarded a U.S. Department of Energy SunShot Technology-to-Market research award to develop business models that guarantees savings to subscribers.
Annadale Energy has support from the Clean Energy Fund Stationary Fuel Cell Program for Community Distributed Generation applications.
CONTACT
NINEDOT
NineDot Energy
NYU Tandon School of Engineering
Urban Future Lab
370 Jay Street, 7th Floor Brooklyn, NY 11201
To get in touch with NineDot, please fill in the our contact form:
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