Premier announces provincial invest fund at Scarborough college

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• Historic Fort York David Spittal courtesy murmur.com
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Born in a bathroom sink four years ago, an Etobicoke company's energy-saving device is now a toast of the town.

This week Premier Dalton McGuinty presented Regen Energy's EnviroGrid electrical demand controllers as the type of new product that will help Ontario come through an economic storm stronger than before.

"This year we're not quite so sure where the global economy is heading," McGuinty said at the Centennial College HP Science and Technology Centre on Scarborough's Morningside Avenue.

When the demand for exports is down "we feel it. It costs us jobs and it costs us our piece of mind," he added, but said there are reasons for hope, including the ability of Ontario companies to innovate.

Regen was one of eight businesses named Monday that received $500,000 each from the province's Investment Accelerator Fund in investments to launch new technology or intellectual property that "meets a defined market need" and whose owners plan to base at least half their employees in Ontario.

Regen says its wireless wall-mounted controllers, equipped with "patented swarm logic," can cut peak electrical demand in buildings, lowering heating and cooling costs without discomfort for the occupants.

CEO Mark Kerbel said the first hand-built prototypes were built in a sink of partner Roman Kulik's home, "much to his wife's chagrin."

Now on Belfield Road, the company is already eyeing the U.S. market and plans on creating more "green collar" jobs in Ontario, including at least two dozen "very immediately," Kerbel announced.

McGuinty and Research and Innovation Minister John Wilkinson also introduced Echologics Engineering, also of Etobicoke, whose technology aims at reducing leaks in water distribution systems that can lose 25 per cent of their volume on the way to the tap.

Another Toronto company, Skymeter Corporation, has developed sensors and a data-processing system that can help vehicles "talk" to parking meters and "opens the door to pay-as-you-drive insurance," McGuinty noted.

It takes years to bring new technology to markets, so it's critical to support businesses developing it at the earliest stages, said Wilkinson.

The EnviroGrid was a relatively quick project, tested in office buildings in York Mills and Mississauga, with data analyzed by a recent Centennial graduate, said

Centennial Energy Institute manager Herb Sinnock.

Further work on the system in simulations and software design, some of it in Centennial labs, some in private buildings, will involve a lot more students from the college over the next year or two, he said.