Laser light table. Credit: NREL, DOE.

Late last year we told you about the reality-TV-inspired event ARPA-E is conducting — “America’s Next Top Energy Innovator” — to accelerate tech transfer out of national labs and into start-up companies to promote “innovative and promising solution[s] to the nation’s energy challenge.”

Readers — it is time to vote!

Fourteen of the 36 companies that signed option agreements are competing in the ANTEI challenge. The ARPA-E challenge website has nice summaries of each company that tells about the technology being presented, the national lab it came out of and a brief video profile. The website is also keeps a running tally of the votes.

Voting is easy: just click the “Like” button. The winner will be determined by combining the results of the voting with the evaluations of an expert panel from DOE.  The agency also says the top startup companies will be invited to be featured at the premier annual gathering of clean energy investors and innovators around the country, the ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit at the end of February.

The polls are open until Monday, Feb. 6 at 8:59 am.

While the first ANTEI is coming to a conclusion, DOE Secretary Steven Chu announced today that the agency is adding a second “season” to the program, and is launching the 2012-13 version of ANTEI Feb. 1.

To learn more about working with DOE labs and their technologies, check out the Energy Innovation Portal on the EERE website.

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