Varentec announced the closing of its Series C funding round. This round includes investments from existing investors 3M Ventures, Bill Gates and Khosla Ventures. The investment will be used both to expand Varentec's activities internationally and to continue the development of the company's GEMS™ software platform and ENGO® grid edge control devices functionality for deployments across the U.S.
Varentec empowers utilities with real-time advanced power electronics and software needed to improve grid efficiency, manage peak demand, reduce consumer electricity bill and effectively host a large amount of renewable distributed energy resources.
Utilities have invested a significant amount of capital into infrastructure, communications, and software for the distribution grid from 2011 to 2015. Following the successful results of some of these programs, Volt VAR Optimization (VVO) is now perceived as a value-creating tool for utilities and society, and has hence created a market, to come to full maturity quickly. Utilities have also included VVO and Conservation Voltage Reduction (CVR) programs as part of their multi-year strategic Grid Modernization Plan, and are now filing for large-scale investments to start in 2017.
"With multiple successful substation-level pilots at Investor Owned Utilities and Public & Cooperative Power Utilities, Varentec is now poised for production rollouts of its GEMS and ENGO solutions. This Series C funding, with the backing of 3M Ventures, Bill Gates and Khosla Ventures, further demonstrates the engagement of our shareholders to bring a new concept of grid efficiency to market. With 3M global presence, and other partners, we will accelerate our international expansion in selected countries, and additional growth for our U.S. sales," said Varentec Chairman and CEO, Guillaume Dufosse.
"We are proud that Varentec GEMS and ENGO Solution, through its unique low-voltage & real-time control contribution, provides significant performance differentiation versus traditional slower, centralized software-based solutions. It will be key to helping Utilities achieve ambitious grid efficiency, peak demand reduction and energy savings targets,†concluded Dufosse.
