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CenSES annual report 2014
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Morpho Solar AS is a start-up from the NTNU School of
Entrepreneurship that works with marketing of the solar grill
Solgrillen and developing a heat battery for solar grills. Along
the way to where Morpho is today, there was much learning
and many turning points.
The journey started with us who today form Morpho’s core
team, three fourth-year students at the NTNU School of
Entrepreneurship, got in touch with a PhD student at NTNU’s
Institute for Energy and Process Technology (EPT) via NTNU
TTO. The PhD student showed us a prototype of a “Solar
Stove” (or “Solovn” in Norwegian). This was a system complete
with solar collector, heat transfer to a cooking plate, and
heat storage. Such technologies had been developed at EPT
since 2007. The team wanted to work with something which
gave environmental gains and could lead to positive e ects
in developing countries. Therefore, we chose to work further
with this idea.
At the beginning, “Team Solovn” as the team at the NTNU
School of Entrepreneurship was called, consisted of ve stu-
dents. Early on, we received support from Spark NTNU to trav-
el to Ethiopia for market research and feasibility studies. We
focused on Ethiopia since deforestation, scarcity of accessible
re wood, and grave health damages from indoor smoke
represent serious problems in the region. Moreover, the idea’s
proprietor is Ethiopian such that we had a good starting
point with respect to contact network and basic understand-
ing of the local business environment. Consequently, the
solar stove idea aimed at baking the common bread “Injera” –
which resembles the Norwegian svele or lefse.
While Ethiopia was considered a starting point for sales of
solar stoves to institutions such as bakeries and schools, we
regarded India as quite interesting because of the large num-
ber of companies working with thermal solar energy. Hence,
the team wanted to travel to India to meet these companies
and create contacts for potential collaboration. For this, we
received support from CenSES. This helped us also much in
gaining insight into how this industry functions and we could
clarify strengths and weaknesses of our technology.
We established valuable contacts in both Ethiopia and India,
but it was in the USA in the summer of 2014 when our work
with Solovn became Morpho Solar. During the summer term,
the team met – through the School of Entrepreneurship at
Boston University – the founders of One Earth Designs at a
conference for solar cookers. One Earth Designs are a startup
that already has been on the market with a solar grill
since 2013.
Morpho Solar AS – from baking injera in Etiophia to the world market
This grill is acknowledged as a quality product which can
show the work that thermal solar energy is a good solution
for some energy challenges. However, One Earth Designs had
not managed to nd a way to store solar energy. But we did!
Furthermore, NTNU’s research in this eld was already known
to be well advanced in the world.
After meeting One Earth Designs, the relations between the
two start-ups have become closer and closer. Since autumn
2014, Morpho Solar has been the distributor in Scandinavia –
and now in the whole of Europe – for Solgrillen, and Morpho
Solar use NTNU technology as a starting point to develop
a heat storage for the solar grill such that the two products
form a complete solution for the user. Today, it looks like that
the Morpho team will be able to work full-time with salary in
their own start-up from this summer on. This is a fast progress
for a start-up company and we are proud to succeed in a
priority business area which is incredibly important for our
common future – clean energy. Solgrillen will be available in
Jernia shops in Norway shortly after Easter, and the heat stor-
age is on the way. In addition, we have some large interna-
tional partners waiting.
To be supported by CenSES meant and means very much for
Morpho Solar, and we hope to be able to continue this
collaboration also in the future.
The Morpho solar team in action, Dag Håkon Haneberg,
Guri Grytli Seim and Even Haug Larsen