The Voltage Valley continues to be in the spotlight after an energy incubator company in Warren called BRITE is receiving half a million dollars in CARES Act funds through the Economic Development Administration.

BRITE will use these CARES Act funds to support start-up energy companies aimed to create sustainable technology.

"Last year, during Covid, we saw four times more entrepreneurs reaching out to BRITE in Warren, Ohio, and saying, 'Hey we want to start an energy company,'" BRITE CEO Rick Stockburger said. 

One of these companies now partnering with BRITE is called CZAR-POWER, founded by a man originally from Akron and just relocated their company to Warren from Tennessee. After Anthony Frisone spent years in the army, he thought up an idea under the hot sun in Afghanistan and chose the Valley to make it happen.

"The bottom line is right now, it's too expensive for most normal people to adopt clean energy technologies, so it requires a lot of different systems, power, and electronics to make it happen," Frisone said, "What we're doing at CZAR is we're taking a lot of those complicated systems and instead of having multiple traditionally expensive systems, we're putting them all in one box..."

Frisone partnered with experts and created an all-in-one system for consumers. He said this power "box" will fast charge an electric vehicle "better than a third of the current cost" and can also power a home when it's not in use.

"So you can use our device one system, two feet by one foot by six inches, route the solar on your roof through our box, and fast charge your electric vehicle about a mile every 45 seconds," Frisone said. 

He said because of BRITE, he's excited to be home and put the 100% renewable energy system in action. 

"In situations like mine, you've got a couple of choices," he said, "You can either run away to the coasts and live in a world someone else built or go back home and put your flag in the ground and build something yourself."

Frisone and Stockburger said this will bring hundreds of new middle-class jobs to the Valley in the next two years from start-up companies like CZAR-POWER.

"We've created a real gem here," Valley Congressman Tim Ryan said, "and what's four jobs today is going to be a hundred or two hundred jobs in a couple of years."

Frisone tells me CZAR POWER has raised over a million dollars in funding and said he's finishing safety liability certification before they start selling the product.

"It's going to be cutting edge," Ryan said, "If you can both charge your vehicle and use sunlight to provide the charge, you're now killing two birds with one stone."

Frisone said as of now, they have a manufacturer based in Michigan, but also hope to move the manufacturing to the Valley.