Sylfen

This is the end. Sylfen has been put in compulsory liquidation by the Court of Commerce of Grenoble on July 16th, 2024. The activity of the company therefore stops immediately. As a company, as a start-up, Sylfen had the goal of providing a competitive solution to rely on local green energy. This is still a missing element to succeed in the Energy transition, as it was 10 years ago. To achieve this, Sylfen developed a solid oxide reversible electrolysis and fuel cell machine, also capable to give value to the waste heat attached to the conversion of power to hydrogen and then hydrogen to power. It provides a long-term energy storage, with optimal efficiency. To complete the solution, it was hybridized with Li-Ion batteries for peak power management and short-term energy storage. And several software packages allowed to design solutions for customers, then operate and monitor the local energy flows at customer's. It appears this development was probably too ambitious for our ecosystem of industry and investors. We sincerely hope others will succeed in this endeavour! Indeed, some positive signs are visible: Stationary batteries market is starting to grow fast. It has today a still limited impact on the energy mix, but enable short-term power storage services and profitable arbitrations on the power market prices. This will open the market for longer term energy storage. Hydrogen players are yet mainly focused on large production, transportation and local distribution projects, but several R&D and industrial teams are also developing reversible solid oxide electrolysis to balance the energy grids. Public regulators are now understanding that a MWh of power at noon during a sunny day of July is not the same thing that a MWh of power in the early evening of a freezing January, which is the basis to create market conditions to harness the full potential of low carbon power associated with long term energy storage technologies. Biogas is keeping a steady growth, and this will lead to the rediscovery that gas based local cogeneration is a key asset for the energy transition. Probably too ambitious, with insufficient equity right from the start, Sylfen struggled for 10 years and ultimately failed to open the market. And found no one to take-over and continue the journey. Today, the main feeling is sadness for such a waste. Sadness for our customers. Sadness for the part of the team that stayed ready to go-on. There is also a lot of gratitude for people who helped us (that will be another post)! At least we tried. We learned a lot, and at the same time we contributed to the general understanding that local energy systems are a reasonable and attractive option to complete the energy transition. Others will succeed, and we wish them the best of luck because this still means a lot to build a sustainable future for our kids. So keep innovating, bros!

Let's speak about money! A hardware start-up burns cash. To develop products and services that will generate margins and sustainable growth later on. Sylfen is in this case. In the past years of activity, the company invested approx. 9 M€, including 1,1 M€ in prototypes, 500 k€ in infrastructure and 7,4 M€ in know-how. Turnover was starting to raise: 90 k€ in 2021, 490 k€ in 2022, 1 020 k€ in 2023. Honesty demands not to communicate growth rates in % with such figures!! Anyway, the dynamics was launched, and the plan was to surpass 2 M€ turnover in 2024 and then accelerate much faster with the development of our Medium Power product. A 6,2 M€ contract was won in Spain, that we couldn't sign because we were missing a financial guarantee. But it is still an open opportunity. How much has to be invested in a take-over plan? It will depend much on the existing assets and strategy of the buyer. A few figures to share orders of magnitude: - 2,8 M€ was the volume of the financial bridge we were negociating in october 2023, for one more year operation before raising funds. - 20 M€ was the target of the next round of equity raise we were planning, to scale-up, expand in Europe and industrialise: an ambitious plan! - 9 M€ is a possible total amount of equity needed to reach a positive EBITDA with the medium power product in 2027. - 3,9 M€ is the total grant or loan expected in a new project focused on the Medium Power product development and qualification (for a total budget of 7,5 M€) that was in the final steps of evaluation at BPI-France when we got bankrupted and entered the present phase of operation under the protection of the court of commerce. Thanks Novanexia for your support in preparing this project and the previous one for EIC Accelerator! In the money jungle, cash is king... A few millions have yet to be invested to get Sylfen to a mature product's stage and make it cash positive. And then several millions more to go full industrial if one chooses to do so (alternative being a labless model, but that would be a pity). But of course, several national and European funding sources, co-development partnerships, pilot projects and so on can be leveraged to co-finance the next years of development of Sylfen: a lot has been prepared and can be reused by new owners to cross the money jungle! Stay tuned for more insight about Sylfen!

Sylfen's Past, Present & Futures Past The work about Sylfen started 10 years ago, even before the company was founded. What was it about ? Everybody knew the solid oxide cells could perform both in electrolysis and fuel cell modes. But what about the stacks? And was it possible to design a system, a machine, efficient in both modes? We started by system and process simulation. The answer was Yes We Can! But then the road was long to find funding and develop the product. Much too slowly for our taste. But the Alpha prototype showed that it was feasible, and now various labs & companies in Europe develop alternative rSOC solutions. With Sylfen, one can integrate 10 years of development to gain time. In the meantime, we were amont the first to explore the market of local energy storage. Integrating hydrogen in this market enables higher rates of renewable energy integration. Global power & heating optimisation is needed, and we developed the tools to do it. To design systems, then to operate them. Present The first Smart Energy Hub product is designed. We call it the "gamma version". Waiting in the basement to be brought to life with a proper command & control software. Software is ready to deploy to demonstrate a Smart multi-energy EMS (batteries & hydrogen hybridized) and the Smart Energy App tool to help customers understand and master their energy mix. Futures The future does not exist. Futures is the right word. Always plural. Because it depends on us, on you. Sylfen will either end as an inspiring (hopefully) story, or as a living tool to accelerate the energy transition. Remember: offers to buy the company are expected on June 28th!

4 weeks left to take-over Sylfen! You still have two full weeks to prepare an offer to take-over Sylfen! And then, two additional full weeks in July to improve and fine-tune your offer. 2 + 2 = 4! 4 weeks then. Much more time than what is available for the election to the "Assemblée Nationale" ! So either you are campaigning to be elected, or you can come and have a look into the Data Room, and visit us in SLS Actiparc to prepare an offer! Stay tuned, more about Sylfen soon!

Nice news!

What is Sylfen? We just received this morning a very standard call. A large building company preparing an offer to improve the environmental performance of a public building, in this case a University in a medium sized town in the center of France. Gas is available. A new burner can be installed, better than old fuel heating. Solar PV can also be installed, but self consumption will be limited. Selling the surplus into the grid is clearly the basic option, but it's frustrating not to be able to harness all this available local renewable power to optimise the energy mix of the building. Shifting to heat pumps, with the French low carbon power mix, would be good in terms of CO2. But heat pumps will use power more in wintertime, when PV production will be low, and the global energy bill will increase. People call because with the Smart Energy Hub, they can do Somethin' Else. We can optimise the use of local power to use it fully for the local energy mix. Use the waste heat generated by the power to hydrogen (electrolysis mode) and by the hydrogen (or gas) to power (fuel cell mode) conversions, to contribute to the local heating needs (SP product) or even in due time to the cooling needs (MP product). Having hydrogen on site can give the opportunity to shift now or later to a mix fuel burner (gas + hydrogen). Having batteries on site can give the opportunity to add more easily EV chargers on the local power grid. The Smart Energy Hub is not simply a power device: it's Somethin' Else, the core of a new local flexible multi-energy minigrid. Sylfen's value proposal is not just a hardware product: it's Somethin' Else, including monitoring of local energy demand and production, forecasting, flexible operation made possible by storage and cogeneration services. Sylfen's services, in an energy design study, is not calculating the peak power achievable from PV, or the type of burner to install: so many engineering companies know how do to that better than us. Our service is Somethin' Else, opening the eyes of the client and of the partner's companies: learning that a more satisfying energy mix is possible to envision, to prepare, to anticipate. Unfortunately today, the Smart Energy Hub is not yet a commercial and industrial product. It will take a few more years, to adress the numerous commercial opportunities such as the one that arrived this morning by this phone call. We lacked funding to develop fast enough and be ready. But no one is yet ready to adress these new demands of really sustainable and local energy mix. So it's not too late. You can pile up solar PVs, heat pumps, batteries, electrolyzers, hydrogen burners, and still not achieve a simple and attractive solution for your clients. Somethin' Else is missing, that's what Sylfen is about.

The (blue) Sylfen's Data-Room is open! Thanks to the work of the management team Vincent Bienvenu, Gilles Granié and Nicolas Bardi, and of our judicial administrators at AJ MEYNET & ASSOCIES and in particular Lea Elefanti, we now have an open Data Room to be accessed by candidates interested in buying the company. An access to this data room (and indeed its color is blue...) is sent to you after signing a NDA available on demand through Lea Elefanti or Nicolas Bardi. It contains administrative, financial, technical, social and commercial information about Sylfen. In particular, we have a synthetic note explaining "what is Sylfen" and a very interesting great external vision about Sylfen's past & future brought by Gilles Granié in the form of an exec sum. We are preparing with the help of all the team at Sylfen additional technical documentation on our products, software, and services, to be uploaded in the next days. Stay tuned!

SYLFEN sale plan: at the core of the #TRANSITION Why is #transition a key word for Sylfen? Because Sylfen's software enable customers to understand their actual energy mix and design the #transition towards more local energy, more self-consumption, more storage (often batteries first, then the global package with hydrogen), new energy systems (heat-pumps, EV chargers, hydrogen burners...) Because the Smart Energy Hub itself can evolve to make the energy #transition a reality at customers': adapting to successive investments in solar PV by adding rSOC or battery modules; starting with the methane cogeneration option to complete the local energy mix, then increasing the share of hydrogen with larger tanks so as to reduce CO2 emissions; operating first to optimise self consumption, then evolving to also provide hydrogen to an Hydrogen Refuelling Station... Because making the energy #transition is not waiting until one is able to design an ideal energy systems for each customer, but taking the reality as it is and deploying step by step new systems to adapt to everchanging regulations, labels, energy policies, business opportunities and customer's needs. Because for those who now consider to buy Sylfen, the integration of what we have developed in the past ten years in terms of hardware and software will accelerate your #transition to establish your position in the evolving new energy systems' market: enabling the integration of your own existing products or services in a global vision of the customer's energy mix. Because after years of R&D, the Sylfen team now has to make the #transition to validate, deliver and operate at cutomer's site the products and software they have designed. The failure to operate this #transition with our team was obviously one key aspect of the events which led to the present situation of having Sylfen on sale... Because the #transition from the initial managing team at Sylfen to a new industrial vision and leadership can enable Sylfen to make the #transition from the status of a fragile start-up to the one of an innovative hardware and software industrial company with a very high potential of value generation for its shareholders. Stay tuned for more insight into Sylfen! And refer to the "Now's the Time post" to get the contacts for the sale plan procedure.

Interested to take-over Sylfen? Now's the time! As explained 10 days ago in a previous post by Sylfen, the company is running out of cash and looking for new owners, in a procedure led by the Court of Commerce of Grenoble. A dream team has been put together to sell the company and share with you all the data you need to design an offer: At Sylfen, you can contact Nicolas Bardi, Gilles Granié or Vincent Bienvenu. At AJ MEYNET & ASSOCIES, administrators of justice, you can reach David-Emmanuel Meynet or Magali Chatelain If your lawyers want to speak to our lawyer, the right person to contact is Fanny Biesuz Now's the time, because offers will have to be prepared for the end of June. The exact day is not yet known but will be communicated as soon as we have the information. Now's the time because a data room will be ready by the end of the week after signing an NDA we can provide. Now's the time because a lot of things can be discussed to prepare your project. Now's the time because energy transition is waiting for high capacity energy storage and flexible local energy supply. Now's the time because, if you are not interested in taking-over Sylfen, you may know people who may know people who could be interested, so please transfer this post to your network. Stay tuned! #hydrogen #energystorage #sofc #soec #rSOC #EMS #AI #energytransition #smartgrid #localenergy

Sylfen en redressement par manque de financement. Par jugement du Tribunal de Commerce de Grenoble, ce 13 mai 2024, la société SYLFEN a été placée en redressement judiciaire. Cette situation ouvre une fenêtre d’opportunité de reprise de l’entreprise, qui a toujours dans ses gènes le potentiel de devenir un acteur industriel et logiciel majeur de la transition énergétique et d’offrir ce faisant des perspectives de valorisation spectaculaires. Sylfen c’est aujourd’hui un produit, le Smart Energy Hub, rendant possible le stockage massif d’énergie par l’hybridation de batteries lithium et d’hydrogène. C'est aussi une suite de logiciels stratégiques permettant (i) la configuration de solutions de stockage d’énergie associée à l'autoconsommation (logiciels ProfilBat et ConfigDym), (ii) l’opération automatisée du Smart Energy Hub ou simplement de batteries (EMS de supervision PASEO) et (iii) le suivi des flux d’énergie (Smart Energy App) sur site client. Chacune de ces briques, depuis 10 ans, a été développée et testée, par partie. La technologie d’électrolyse réversible a été techniquement démontrée en particulier grâce au financement de BPI France (projet DeepTech Altaïr) ; la chaîne de compression de l’hydrogène a été expérimentée ; l’opération des batteries a été réalisée, y compris sur site distant et en incluant des fonctions de service réseau ; les logiciels de configuration produit ont été utilisés pour des dizaines d’études réalisées pour des clients ; l’EMS Paseo est actuellement opéré sur site distant ; la Smart Energy App a été mise en production. Deux équipements complets et deux sites clients en France, sont disponibles pour faire la démonstration complète de l’offre Sylfen : une opération réalisable en quelques mois. Il reste bien entendu du chemin à parcourir. SYLFEN a manqué de financement pour poursuivre son développement, mais le projet reste largement accessible à de nouveaux repreneurs industriels. Restez connectés pour en savoir plus. La transition énergétique a besoin de solutions de stockage et d’intelligence embarquée sur tous les sites consommateurs et producteurs d’énergie. C’est le projet engagé par Nicolas Bardi et Caroline Rozain il y a 10 ans en créant Sylfen. Qui reprendra le flambeau ?