PlotWatt, a three-year-old startup, aims to help consumers turn smartgrid information into savings on utility bills. And two developments add credibility to the company’s business plan.
Not only did the company announce Thursday that it has secured $1 million in venture capital funding from a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, PlotWatt also disclosed that it had won a GE Ecomagination Challenge. In addition to the prestige of the award, PlotWatt received a $100,000 grant.
Smartgrid technology capitalizes on so-called smart meters that monitor in great detail energy usage.
PlotWatt’s founders are taking the data gathered from the smart meters even further, helping consumers and businesses analyze their energy usages. The company believes its data can be turned into action by users to slice their utility bills.
The secret sauce for PlotWatt is the algoriothms that slice and dice the smart meter data.
PlotWatt’s “patent-pending machine learning algorithms that enable PlotWatt to figure out appliance-level energy cost and recommendations without monitoring individual appliances,” a spokesperson for the company says.
“We have replaced costly hardware with free software.”
Felicis Ventures believes enough in the concept to provide $1 million in seed funding.
The GE Challenge awarded PlotWatt the “Powering Your Home” grant.
Called the PlotWatt Energy Dashboard, it is being offered at no charge. The company says the data bases recommendations on all energy uses, not just individual appliances.
The GE contest recognized five winners among 856 entries.
“We are thrilled to win GE’s Ecomagination Challenge,” Luke Fishback, PlotWatt’s chief executive officer, said. “It is strong validation of our efforts to educate consumers on, manage, and reduce home energy costs.”
A version for business, called the PlotWatt Commercial Energy Platform, reviews data from multiple locations. The company estimates it can help enterprises reduce energy costs by 10 percent.
“PlotWatt is one of the most exciting companies we’ve come across, leading the charge to make energy consumption more efficient, with just software,” said Aydin Senkut, founder and managing director of Felicis Ventures in a statement. “Their work directly impacts both the consumer and business side of the smart grid which will lead to significant energy savings by optimizing consumption. This has the potential to benefit everyone from the individual households to large corporations around the world.”
Felicis Ventures is based in Palo Alto, Calif.
PlotWatt has also received other funding, having won a $40,000 North Carolina Green Business Fund Grant. The PlotWatt founders also helped get the business rolling with an $8,000 mix of cash and prizes from the Duke Startup Challenge.
Fishback decided to launch PlotWatt after fighting his own “big electric bills.” He is a former aerospace systems engineer at Lockheed Martin. Fishback earned a master’s degree in engineering management at Dartmouth.
His partner and company co-founder John Cunningham began writing algorithms used in PlotWatt while wrapping up a PhD at Stanford. He earned an undergraduate degree in computer science at Dartmouth and went on to add a master’s and PhD in electrical engineering at Stanford. In addition to teaching engineering, Cunningham also has been a banker focusing on mergers and acquisitions.
The company currently had six employees and will be hiring four more software developers this summer.
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