Money keeps coming into the busy, yet nascent, home energy management space. The latest recipient is EnergyHub, which announced a series B round of funding on Thursday.
The latest round raised $14.5 million from .406 Ventures, Physic Ventures and two new investors, Acadia Woods and the New York Investment Fund.
The money will be used to expand business and support the launch of its Mercury wireless thermostat software service.
“EnergyHub has successfully built a multi-channel business while maintaining its mission to keep energy efficiency simple, informative, and actionable,” Jeff Samberg of Acadia Woods, said in a statement. “The company has established itself as a leader in the energy management field with proven solutions that meet the needs of the marketplace.”
Although the needs of the marketplace are still fuzzy, EnergyHub is willing to morph to meet that market when it's finally ready. Mercury is an evolution of the Brooklyn-based company’s dashboard and software offerings. It is a white label service that is being offered to television and cable providers, home security companies and utilities that can ride on top of any wireless thermostat.
By offering this software-as-service, in addition to its hardware side of the business, EnergyHub will be able to play both sides of the coin -- winning with utilities that decide to offer technology solutions to customers, and also diversifying into the cable and telco space when they make a move into energy management.
“EnergyHub’s suite of service offerings is designed and priced to meet the needs of consumers, utilities, service providers, and device manufacturers,” Seth Frader-Thompson, CEO of EnergyHub, said in a statement. “This funding will support the expansion of its service offerings in the market.”
However, the funding is said to support Mercury, rather than the hardware side of the business, suggesting that EnergyHub is putting a little extra money on the software horse at the moment. Dashboards abound in the home energy management space, but when they run into the hundreds of dollars, it’s difficult to see the market where a utility, or even a homeowner, is willing to pay for it upfront if it does not come with a smart thermostat or other, more demand response-friendly technology that will offer double-digit percentages in energy savings.
Frader-Thompson told Greentech Media around the time of the Mercury launch that the company would have announcements soon regarding partnerships for the platform, with more in the pipeline. “That will get us to hundreds of thousands of customers in the very near term,” he said.