EnergyHub will soon see its home energy management displays and devices deployed as part of a $6 million smart grid project being done by utility Consolidated Edison in the New York City borough of Queens.
The Brooklyn-based startup announced the deal Monday, but didn't disclose what its financial value might be to the company. EnergyHub makes displays and web-based software that can monitor and control energy usage, either from smart meters or from the ZigBee-enabled wall sockets, power strips and "smart" thermostats it makes.
That home energy monitoring function is similar to what is already being provided by a plethora of startups, including Tendril Networks, Greenbox Technology, Onzo, AlertMe, eMeter and OpenPeak, to name a few (see The Smart Home, Part I). It's also the goal of platforms being developed by Google, Microsoft and Cisco (see stories here, here and here).
EnergyHub hasn't seen as much investment as some of its better-funded startups. The company, formed by veterans of NASA and military contractor Honeybee Robotics, started in 2007 with a $156,000 grant from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. In April landed an undisclosed series A investment from .406 Ventures and Physic Ventures (see Green Light post).
EnergyHub is already in a 50-home pilot project with an undisclosed utility. Its partnership with ConEd will see its devices and software put into about 100 homes in Queens, out of about 300 that will get such devices.
EnergyHub CEO Seth Frader-Thompson said the utility hadn't yet disclosed which companies it would turn to for the remaining homes.
The utility is also seeking an undisclosed amount of money from the Department of Energy's Smart Grid Investment Grant stimulus program to support an expanded, $375 million series of smart grid projects, including a 40,000-smart meter deployment (see Green Light post).
Frader-Thompson said he couldn't speak for the utility's plans, but if the utility does get the stimulus grant, "Then the scale of our efforts in the project would be significantly larger."
The company has several other large utility partnerships that are in progress to be announced in the next few months, about half of them linked to stimulus grant applications, he said.
EnergyHub's control dashboards include several options to turn off or preset power-down settings for the wall sockets or thermostats it connects to, he said.
The company also is developing an iPhone application for managing and controlling energy use remotely, he said – something several others in the space are working on (see Green Light posts here and here).
Interact with smart grid industry visionaries from North American utilities, innovative hardware and software vendors and leading industry consortiums at The Networked Grid on November 4 in San Francisco.