Singapore's newly-announced Ecolabs aims to boost innovation by startups and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the energy sector.
Formed by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Enterprise Singapore, and the Sustainable Energy Association of Singapore, the one-stop center hopes to accelerate product development and commercialization by providing multidisciplinary technical support, cutting edge research equipment, and access to the latest scientific research in clean energy.
"The initiative will provide test bedding so that companies can easily validate their innovations and skills, and build their track record if they want to internationalize. EcoLabs addresses a longstanding gap in the energy sector, and is going to plug this gap by bringing together partners from academia, industry and the government,” said Chee Hong Tat, Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry, and Education at the launch.
Ecolabs will work with corporate partners and investors to provide the startups and SMEs with up to 30 public and private-sector test-bedding sites, ranging from high-tech lab facilities to specialized test centres, to safely trial their ideas and innovations in a controlled environment.
Artificial intelligence is key in this sector as the nation is moving towards building smarter buildings, managing complex power grids, and deploying autonomous electric vehicles and machine learning for micro-grids optimization to meet the ever complex supply and demand requirements.
NVIDIA will be the key partner in this area by availing the NVIDIA AI Technology Centre (NVAITC) with its wealth of AI resources and expertise, and extensive global network. Participating companies will have access to training and use NVIDIA GPUs to develop AI applications for their products and services.
Besides being a trusted advisor, NVAITC will support Ecolabs’ participants advance their research through know-how, talent and the sharing of best practices from around the world.