Energy-management startup EnergyHub is raising an undisclosed amount in its first round of venture-capital funding, according to Greentech Media analyst Rick Thompson.
The New York City-based startup, which is developing a device that monitors and manages residential energy usage, claims its device can reduce home energy costs by 20 percent.
The company was a finalist in the MIT Clean Energy Entrepreneurship Prize in March and in December received a $156,000 grant from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (see announcements here).
Thompson, vice president of research and operations at Greentech Media, said Wednesday that EnergyHub is about to install a "handful" of systems throughout New York City as its first test city and is planning a 50-system trial in partnership with a large, unnamed utility later this year.
The company hopes to bring a product to the market next year, he said.
The EnergyHub news broke the same day that Greenbox Technology announced the first pilot project for its energy-management software (see Earth2Tech post).
The company, which is developing software to help manage residential energy consumption and costs, said it has rolled out its platform to 50 Oklahoma Gas and Electric Co. customers.
Greenbox didn't disclose the terms of the deal.
Matt Smith, Greenbox's vice president for marketing, said the company plans to expand to larger and larger groups to gain more experience on the way to a full deployment.
"At the moment, we are in the first stage," he said.
San Bruno, Calif.-based Greenbox partnered with smart-grid company Silver Spring Networks on the project, using the Redwood City, Calif.-based company's network for data collection and transmission.
"This technology has the potential to change the relationship we have with our customers," said Ken Grant, managing director of marketing for Oklahoma Gas and Electric, in a written statement. "It is the key to empowering our customers both with better and more timely information and with the tools they need to respond to this information to better manage their energy usage."
Companies such as EnergyHub and Greenbox could end up being good acquisition targets, Thompson said.
"I can't help but think that some of the grid or network-side folks like Silver Spring wouldn't gobble guys like this up for more of an end-to-end solution over time," he said, citing the way that access-network players in the telecom industry bought up advanced hom e-networking companies once new applications emerged.
In other smart-grid news, smart-metering company Trilliant announced it raised $40 million in financing from MissionPoint Capital Partners and Zouk Ventures (see Green Light post).
And demand-response company ConsumerPowerline on Wednesday announced a contract to provide energy management for Marcal Manufacturing.
The agreement calls for Consumer Powerline to reduce Marcal's energy consumption by 18 megawatts when requested by transmission organization PJM Interconnection to help avoid outages.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story listed a different funding amount for EnergyHub.