News

Varentec Receives $7.7 M Series A Round Funding

January 17, 2012 by Jeff Shepard

Varentec, an emerging green technology company, closed a $7.7M Series A funding round in late 2011 led by Khosla Ventures, a clean tech venture capital firm. Varentec also announced that Dr. Deepak Divan will lead the company as President and CTO.

Vinod Khosla, founding partner of Khosla Ventures, indicated that "the grid of the future will require dynamic control achieved with smart, networked power electronics devices. Under Dr. Divan’s leadership and vision, we believe that Varentec’s solutions will have a transformative impact on the electricity industry."

Dr. Deepak Divan is an industry veteran, thought leader and prolific inventor, with over 35 years of experience as an entrepreneur and as an academic. He is an IEEE Fellow, a recipient of the IEEE William E. Newell Field Award in power electronics, and is past President of the IEEE Power Electronics Society. Dr. Divan stated, "I am excited to be given the opportunity by Khosla Ventures to develop and execute on a new vision to achieve dynamic control of the grid, and to provide new solutions to solve pressing problems in the electricity sector."

Concurrently, Varentec announced an award of a Department of Energy ARPA-E grant of $5M to demonstrate ’power routers’ that can dynamically control power flows on the electric grid, to enable higher levels of green energy integration while reducing the build-out of new grid infrastructure. Partner organizations include Electric Power Research Institute, Waukesha/SPX, and the NEETRAC center at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

More news and information regarding the latest developments in Smart Grid electronics can be found at Darnell’s SmartGridElectronics.Net.