First published in Cleantech Infocus: 2010 - Equity Deals of the Year, January 2011. Copyright Cleantech Investor Ltd
Smart grid investment continues to attract the attention of venture backers, with 2010 seeing fund raising by OPOWER, Trilliant and Accent. And October saw the listing of German smart meter company Elster on the NYSE.
Smart building materials are attracting growing levels of investor interest. Venture deals in energy efficient materials included funding for French electrochromic glass manufacturer, Sage Electrochomics, from glass company Saint-Gobain, alongside venture investors. Hightex, a UK company which designs large area membrane roofs and facades, raised funding in the first half of the year. And Denmark’s PhotoSolar, which has developed technology for integrating solar shading into facade glazing, raised funds in the second half.
Elster Group
IPO - NYSE
German smart meter company, Elster, listed on the New York Stock Exchange in October at a price of $13. Elster offers distribution monitoring and control, advanced smart metering, demand response, networking and software solutions to utilities. The company has an installed base of over 200 million metering modules in more than 130 countries, for electricity, gas, water and multi-utility applications. Elster’s EnergyAxis is an end-to-end Smart Grid solution based on public IP standards.Trilliant Inc.
Venture Capital Fund Raising
Trilliant raised $106 million in July, its second funding round, from investors including MissionPoint Partners and zouk ventures. Trilliant was chosen by British Gas to provide communications equipment for its smart meter roll-out in the UK: British Gas plans to roll out more than one million smart meters by 2012.OPOWER Inc.
Venture Capital Fund Raising
US Energy efficiency and smart grid software company, OPOWER, raised $50 million in Series C financing from Accel Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and New Enterprise Asssociates (NEA). The company’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) customer engagement communications platform, which evaluates a household’s energy usage, is used by seven of the ten largest utilities in the US. OPOWER, which was founded in 2007, was presented with the 2011 Technology Pioneer Award during a World Economic Forum meeting in Tianjin, People’s Republic of China, in September 2010.Accent S.r.l.
Venture Capital Fund Raising
Accent, which designs system-on-chip solutions, raised €5 million from Tallwood Venture Capital. The company has developed the ASMgrid™ technology, a flexible silicon platform which supports smart grid industry standards such as ZigBee® Pro.Sage Electrochromics Inc.
Venture Capital Fund Raising
Sage Electrochromics has received funding from the partnership between the TIAA-CREF Green Building Technology fund and Good Energies, as well as glass manufacturer Saint Gobain. Saint Gobain invested $80 million in the company, which also received funding from NV Bekaert SA. The funds are being used to construct the world’s first large scale electrochromic glass manufacturing facility in Faribault, Minnesota. The plant will have the ability to manufacture much larger sheets of electrochromic glass than those currently available. Electrochromic glass is electronically tintable dynamic glass, activated by a low-voltage current, which adapts its light and heat transmission to the level of sunlight and the building’s ambient temperature, reducing the amount of energy consumed for air conditioning, heating and lighting.PhotoSolar A/S
Venture Capital Fund Raising
SET Venture Partners, in partnership with Danish investors including investment bank Vaekstfonden, The Danish Technological Institute and Syddansk Teknologisk Udvikling, made an investment of DKK 27 million in PhotoSolar, the Danish developer of MicroShade™, which integrates solar shading into facade glazing. The funds will be used for marketing and sales as well as further research and development into ways of combining solar shading with the production of electricity. MicroShade reduces the need for cooling in buildings by 20% or above.Hightex Group
Venture Capital Fund Raising
The Ludgate Environmental Group invested £730,000 in the Hightex Group, a company which designs and installs large area membrane roofs and façades using environmentally friendly materials and innovative coatings, which help reduce energy costs. Projects have included the retractable roof at Wimbledon Centre Court, the 2010 FIFA World Cup stadiums in Johannesburg and Cape Town, the Munich Olympic Hall and Bangkok airport.NOTE: See also Storage: TIAA-CREF Green Building Technology Fund and Good Energies investment in Ice Energy.
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