Forty years ago, Al Bierkle, a salesman at Kelly Services, and Bill Bierkle, an IT employee at Chrysler, saw the future of data processing: bulky yet powerful machines that could perform tasks far more efficiently than humans could.

Mainframe computers were starting increase in popularity, so the Bierkle brothers plunked down $1,200 a month to lease an IBM 360 that took up half the building. They made the investment because they realized that smaller companies would soon be priced out of the technology that was revolutionizing payroll, bill payment, and other data-processing functions that all businesses must tackle.

The Bierkles formed DIVDAT—short for “diversified data”—a Ferndale, MI-based one-stop shop for multi-platform communications that primarily serviced companies in the auto industry, at least for the first decade of its operation. Today, DIVDAT has around 60 employees in Ferndale and Las Vegas, as well as sales offices in four other states. The family-owned company continues to thrive, says president and CEO Jason Bierkle (son of Al), because of its ability to pivot and implement the newest techologies, much like the company founders did in 1971.

“As our culture adopts different ways to communicate, we’re bolting onto whatever technology comes our way,” Jason says, adding that DIVDAT has managed to hold onto customers through the years thanks to its ability to be nimble and communicate with its customers’ customers through whichever channel is preferred, be it mail, phone, or Internet. “We’re using the same data from 1971 and leveraging it to push it through the Internet, text messages, email, Interactive Voice Response, mail, kiosks—that’s the beauty of our model. Our clients only need a single vendor to get connectivity across contemporary formats.”

DIVDAT started out as mainly a print and mail-order business with a large clientele of auto suppliers. As postage costs rose, DIVDAT hedged itself by exploring new channels in which to communicate with clients’ customers. Now, Jason says the company’s three main verticles are the insurance industry, healthcare companies, and utilities.

DIVDAT’s latest pivot is meant to accommodate people who want to pay their bills in cash. This summer, the company is planning to announce a first-of-its kind deal with two other Michigan companies, one of which is bringing resources back from India, to partner on kiosks that will accept cash payments at grocery stores other locations across the state.

“We’re thriving in a changing environment because of our technology in a town that’s not traditionally known for its technology,” Jason says. “Now we’re starting to get the resources around us that will help us grow our business even more.”

Hayley Bierkle, Bill’s daugher, is in the process of moving back to metro Detroit from Chicago to help her family’s company transition to its next stages. She echoes Jason’s philosophy about scalability: “One challenge we face is where to focus. For instance, in healthcare, we see an amazing opportunity as patients become more like consumers. As they’re shopping around, their bills are becoming … Next Page »

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Waltham, MA-headquartered lithium-ion battery manufacturer A123 Systems, which has operations in Michigan, announced today that it is kicking off a pilot project with Boston-based NSTAR to study the benefits of employing the A123′s grid battery technology in a suburban electric grid. The system, NSTAR’s first battery energy storage project, is expected to be up and running in 2012 at a substation in Medway, MA.

Andy Chu, A123′s vice president of marketing and communications, says his company’s grid battery system is designed to provide area regulation services, which address the momentary differences between electric power supply and demand. Fossil fuel-fired generators are the industry standard, but Chu says A123′s batteries can provide the same storage capabilities much more efficiently.

Though A123 Systems is well known for supplying products to auto makers for their electric vehicle lines, Chu says the project with NSTAR is far from the company’s first grid-storage project—in fact, grid energy storage is one of A123′s main vertical markets, and he says he expects that market to provide 40 percent of the company’s income in the future. A123 has manufacturing plants in Livonia and Romulus, in addition to an Ann Arbor research and development site.

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Some Silicon Valley CEOs moonlight as racecar drivers, others as winemakers. Gary Bloom, the outgoing CEO of San Mateo, CA-based eMeter, is probably the only one who spends his off hours as an emergency-response volunteer.

Bloom trained a Menlo Park, CA-based FEMA disaster team that helped with the federal responses to Hurricanes Ivan and Gustav. And as the leader of the San Mateo County sheriff’s rescue team, he directed search operations after the PG&E natural-gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno, CA, last September. But the pipeline disaster, which leveled an entire neighborhood, “was not the normal kind of search and rescue,” Bloom says. “It’s usually lost hikers in the mountains, or Alzheimer’s victims.”

Now Bloom has pulled off a rescue of sorts for his own company. Siemens Industry (NYSE: SI), the Atlanta-based U.S. wing of the German electrical and engineering giant, announced yesterday that it’s acquiring eMeter in a deal expected to close this month, just 20 months after eMeter’s board brought Bloom in to give the smart-grid startup the enterprise-software credentials it needed to compete.

Outgoing eMeter CEO Gary Bloom

The companies aren’t disclosing the financial details of the acquisition. But it’s likely that eMeter’s investors—who include Sequoia Capital, Foundation Capital, Northgate Capital, and DBL Investors, and who had together poured roughly $70 million into the company over 11 years—are breathing a sigh of relief. “It’s a positive outcome for the shareholders and the employees,” says Kyle Arteaga, eMeter’s global head of corporate communications. “Everyone is going to see a return on their investment, which isn’t always the case in cleantech. I think everyone is quite happy.”

EMeter’s entire 175-person workforce will be joining Siemens, with the exception of Bloom himself, who says he will step down as soon as the deal closes. That’s not a total surprise, given his history as CEO of Veritas Software and as a high-level executive at Oracle and Symantec. “Gary has the DNA of a CEO, not a division leader,” says Arteaga. “He completed the task he was invited to do.”

That task was a formidable one. It was to take eMeter, an aging startup with its roots in the utility and telecommunications industries, and make it into a company that could compete with the likes of Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) and Itron (NASDAQ: ITRI) when it comes to selling utilities the software they need to make sense of data from the growing number of smart meters at commercial and residential sites.

“The founders [Cree Edwards and Larsh Johnson] have an unbelievable amount of smart-meter and utility experience, but if you walked down the halls of the company, nobody had enterprise software experience,” says Arteaga. “Gary started bringing in new executives and partners in sales, marketing, business development, and product management who all had enterprise experience, and we really started operating like an enterprise software company. When we did that, we doubled our customer base, our deals became more profitable, and the company was worth more.”

The Siemens acquisition offer wasn’t the first one eMeter had received—but it was “the first time that it presented enough of a value to the shareholders that it was taken seriously,” says Arteaga, who attributes the larger offers to Bloom’s leadership.

I met with Bloom back in August and talked with him about the company’s technology and the personal challenges of making the switch from the business software industry to cleantech. Though the interview took place well before an acquisition was in the air, we hit on many of the themes that likely made eMeter an attractive purchase for Siemens. An edited writeup of our conversation follows.

Xconomy: Why did the eMeter board hire you?

Gary Bloom: I think they hired me for my ability to run a company. We are selling to a big industry, and we have to operate like a big company to service that industry. I have big-company experience. This is the smallest thing I’ve run, shy of the Menlo Park fire and disaster team for a year.

X: What struck you most, when you arrived at eMeter?

GB: What I saw coming in here is one of the last two industries in the world that has not transformed itself with technology. I lived through the telecom transformation and I watched Wall Street adopt electronic trading systems, but if you look at healthcare and the utility industry, those two haven’t transformed themselves at all, and the common denominator is … Next Page »

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“Utilities have a big problem,” says Swapnil Shah, CEO and co-founder of Waltham, MA-based FirstFuel Software.

“They have a big pile of money they have to spend to achieve certain goals,” he continues. “If they don’t achieve it, they get penalized by the state.”

The goal is to increase home and commercial energy efficiency so that they don’t have to spend huge money building new power plants. And the “big pile of money” comes from a tax portion of utility bills that’s put aside to provide incentives to increase energy efficiency, says Shah. (That budget—across the roughly 30 states that participate—was $6.6 billion in 2010, more than double the $3.1 million pool from 2007.) About 40 percent of that budget on average goes to improving energy efficiency in commercial buildings, he says.

Utilities have been sending auditors to buildings to analyze the structure and energy use and recommend improvements, but that method is expensive, inconsistent, and not scalable across thousands of properties. It’s a particular problem for commercial buildings, which can cost anywhere from $5,000 to $30,000 to audit, compared to the $200 or so it takes to perform a residential energy audit, Shah says.

That’s where FirstFuel’s software comes in. The analytics engine just needs utilities to supply a building’s address and a year’s worth of energy consumption data, culled from the hourly meter readings at the buildings. FirstFuel pulls in hourly weather patterns from outside sources and uses GIS mapping and satellite imaging to determine a building’s physical attributes.

Using this information, the software creates detailed reports that show where exactly energy is going in a building, and can offer detailed recommendations on how to reduce energy consumption—either through changing behavior patterns in the buildings or retrofitting. All this is done without an auditor stepping foot in the building or installing any devices, which other energy monitoring technologies often rely on.

“It can analyze hundreds to thousands of buildings in the time it takes to do one on-site visit,” says Shah. “It makes it a very scalable service.”

FirstFuel’s data is reported via a portal that utilities and building managers log into, as a white label solution that is branded as the particular utility’s own. Utilities can see … Next Page »

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FirstFuel Software, a developer of energy auditing analytics technology for commercial buildings, announced today that it has nabbed $2.4 million in first round funding, led by Battery Ventures and Nth Power. The money will go to scaling and fueling customer adoption of FirstFuel’s software, which can profile the energy performance of buildings using data on electric consumption and building characteristics, without the need for an on-site audit.

Boston-based FirstFuel, formerly named iblogix, is led by serial entrepreneur Swapnil Shah, a founder of three IT companies that either went public or were acquired. The FirstFuel software offers recommendations to building managers to adjust their energy consumption practices for immediate savings, and suggests building retrofits to be performed by utilities. The company fits into Boston’s cluster of IT startups developing software geared at lowering energy consumption.

Recently, the Cambridge, MA-based Fraunhofer Center for Sustainable Energy Systems (which I profiled last week) conducted an independent study of the accuracy of FirstFuel’s auditing technology, and found that it “has the potential to be a valuable engine for the large scale benchmarking of buildings and to identify energy-saving opportunities without on-site audits,” according to FirstFuel’s announcement today.

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A startup out to make homes more energy efficient continues to draw investor support. Brooklyn’s EnergyHub said in a press release Thursday it raised $14.5 million in a series B funding round that included Acadia Woods, .406 Ventures, the New York City Investment Fund, and Physic Ventures.

EnergyHub makes software and systems for energy management in homes. The company previously raised $3 million in March 2010 and nearly $7.2 million last December. It plans to use the new funding to expand the distribution of its energy management system, Home Base, and for a thermostat-monitoring software service released early this month.

According Jason Baron, chief operating officer, EnergyHub’s services capitalize on the movement to cut energy demand and to develop smart homes that can monitor appliance usage. “The new funding is going to support our development and the rollout of our Mercury console,” he says. Mercury is cloud-based software that lets homeowners program wireless thermostats, provided by the company, to automate their heat and air conditioning. “[They] can monitor and control it from their PC, an iPad, or other mobile devices,” Baron says.

Baron says utilities can also offer their customers the wireless thermostats, which connect to the Mercury platform. He says the utilities can use the system to set up responses to energy demand based on how users adjust their thermostats, so as to better manage peak loads on the grid.

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Cambridge, MA-based Gridco has raised $12.5 million in equity financing, according to a regulatory filing. The form lists venture capitalists Ric Fulop of North Bridge Venture Partners and Hemant Taneja of General Catalyst Partners as the company’s directors, along with Naimish Patel, formerly of Sycamore Networks. Back in May, the Boston Globe reported that North Bridge and General Catalyst were backing Gridco, a new startup focused on smarter power management technology for utilities and industrial power consumers.

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Dangling a carrot in front of a stubborn mule might get it to prance, but energy customers can be tougher to motivate. Armed with an incentive program to encourage conservation, Efficiency 2.0 in New York thinks it has the right kind of lure to curb energy waste.

Our reliance on appliances, mobile gadgets, and computers continues to put pressure on the power grid. Creating motivation to change energy habits is central to Efficiency 2.0′s plan. With discount deals from retailers available to be earned, the company brings the appeal of credit card and air travel reward programs to the energy sector.

Founder Tom Scaramellino launched Efficiency 2.0′s personal energy efficiency rewards (PEER) program in 2009 as a way for utilities to coax residential and small business customers to reduce their energy usage. “We do a lot of the same stuff that American Express does with their loyalty program,” he says.

The PEER program asks customers to commit to energy saving habits such as turning off lights in unoccupied rooms, purchasing showerheads that reduce water flow, and installing solar panels to help power the home.

Scaramellino says PEER operates like a white-label Mint.com—a money management service, but for energy bills. Customers receive e-mail and direct-mail reports that are branded as materials from their utility providers, suggesting ways to better manage their energy usage. “We put folks on an energy savings plan,” he says. The program runs under the auspices … Next Page »

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Another survey on venture capital activity during the first quarter shows that venture investors put $6.4 billion into 661 startups nationwide. That’s a 35 percent increase in capital and a 5 percent rise in deals, according to the report from Dow Jones VentureSource.

It’s the third survey to show a substantial increase in the amount of money invested during the first quarter, while the number of deals stayed relatively constant or declined.

Big investments in capital-intensive industries, such as renewable energy, healthcare, and information technology, accounted for much of the increase, according to Jessica Canning, global research director for Dow Jones VentureSource. The Dow Jones data also showed:

—Capital invested in venture-backed healthcare companies increased by 21 percent compared to the same quarter last year, but the deal count declined by 6 percent, with $1.6 billion going into 148 deals. As usual, most of that went to venture-backed biopharmaceuticals, which raised $849 million for 61 deals, a 15 percent rise in capital invested and a 13 percent decline in deals.

—Information technology companies raised $1.6 billion for 212 deals nationwide. That was a 16 percent increase in capital invested capital and a 10 percent gain in deals compared to the same quarter last year. Software companies closed 152 deals for $741 million, a 24 percent increase in deals and a 10 increase in capital invested.

—The energy and utilities industry raised $742 million for 33 deals, almost double the capital raised during the same period last year. Six renewable energy companies raised rounds of $50 million or larger, and two of those represented rounds of at least $100 million.

—Seed-stage and Series A rounds accounted for 38 percent of the deals and 16 percent of the capital that was invested during the first quarter. Later-stage deals accounted for 40 percent of the quarter’s deals and 64 percent of total capital raised in the first quarter.

The numbers from Dow Jones follow the MoneyTree Report, which found that VCs invested $5.9 billion in 736 deals during the first three months of 2011. When compared to the same quarter in 2010, the MoneyTree Report showed a 13.7 percent increase in capital and a 6.4 decline in the number of deals.

We also reported data from CB Insights, a New York financial data provider, which said venture investments amounted to $7.5 billion during the first quarter (a 27 percent increase over the first quarter of 2010). CB Insights counted 738 deals throughout the country during the first quarter, which was not a significant change over the deal count in the same quarter of 2010.

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Worcester, MA-based World Energy Solutions (NASDAQ: XWES) said yesterday it is raising $5.5 million in a sale of 1.5 million shares of common stock ($3.60 per share) to several institutional investors. The company says the money will be used for new investments and acquisitions in energy management, among other strategic initiatives. World Energy is known for operating online auctions where energy suppliers compete to win contracts with big customers; early last year it moved into the “demand response” market, in which utilities pay factories, stores, and municipalities to curtail their energy use during peak demand times. The company, which is led by CEO Richard Domaleski, recently invested in a seed financing round for Retroficiency, an energy efficiency and retrofitting startup based in Boston.

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Recently I attended the Boston Smart Grid Forum, where some of the leading “smart grid” minds met to discuss the challenges and opportunities that currently exist. Ontario has been one of the investment leaders in smart grid technology, much of which is being developed through the University of Waterloo. There are a number of similarities between Ontario and the Boston-area energy ecosystem, as new technology developments come from close relationships between the universities and entrepreneurs to develop great technology in emerging markets. Here are some thoughts about the pilot programs currently running in Ontario and the opportunities that exist for similar programs in New England.

Through pilot programs and tests in communities in the Northeast U.S. and Canada, individual efficiency and renewable energy technologies continue to evolve, becoming more efficient and effective every day. Photovoltaic cells are getting more efficient, improving the value of solar panels. Wind turbines are transferring more energy from the blades to the electrical grid.

While significant investment has been focused in these areas, insufficient attention is being paid to the ways in which they can be operated to maximize the benefits across a broader “energy system.” For example, a lot of effort is being exerted in order to improve the efficiency of photovoltaic cells beyond the current levels. There is a big opportunity to increase the value of this existing technology if it were coupled with an energy storage technology so that energy could be stored now and discharged later, during peak demand times, reducing the strain on the overall system. In response to this need, the Province of Ontario, in conjunction with Energent, Hydro One, Ontario Power Authority, Milton Hydro, and the University of Waterloo, are developing the Energy Hub Management System (EHMS).

Energent has been working with utilities in Canada and the U.S. developing smart grid technology for consumers since 2007. In creating the backbone of EHMS, Energent has defined a “hub” as a single, static location, such as a home, manufacturing facility, farm, etc. The management system consists of three key elements. First, there are two-way controls on all energy-consuming and producing devices within the energy hub. These controls will have the capacity to record energy consumption/production, and to direct the operation of the individual device, such as a motor, compressor, or dishwasher.

The second element will be a central core module that consolidates the information from the devices, the external environment (weather, energy prices, etc.), and user-defined models to effectively manage energy.

Finally, the third element is a Web-based portal, which is the user-friendly interface between the energy hub’s managers and the core module technology. This information will also be available on mobile devices for the three major smartphone platforms. Using a local home network to connect the home to the grid, the EHMS provides an effective, integrated interface for both the energy consuming/producing devices within a single, static location. It will also receive, analyze, and act on system-wide information, not seen in most in-home technologies.

The transformational change that comes from this program is the … Next Page »

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[Updated 3:30 pm with financial terms. See below] EnerNOC, the Boston-based energy management firm (NASDAQ: ENOC), continues to look west for its acquisitions. The company announced today it has bought M2M Communications, a Boise, ID-based wireless technology company that has key contracts with energy utilities in California and the Midwest. Financial terms of the deal weren’t given in the release, but EnerNOC says it expects to start making money from the acquisition in 2012.

A company spokesman sent me a statement later in the day: “The total purchase price paid by EnerNOC at closing was $30.0 million, plus an additional $3.3 million paid as a result of M2M having a positive capitalization amount at closing.” The payment was made in cash and common stock, according to the statement.

M2M’s remote monitoring and control technology and utility contracts “are an ideal complement to EnerNOC’s suite of offerings for utility, commercial, and industrial customers,” said Tim Healy, EnerNOC’s chairman and CEO, in a statement. “M2M has the unique ability to tap into largely un-penetrated markets, such as demand response at agricultural facilities.”

EnerNOC helps utilities manage electrical demand from customers and respond to times of peak activity, among other kinds of programs. The M2M deal is the latest in a series of interesting acquisitions for the company. Last month, it bought Global Energy Partners, a California-based engineering and services company. And just over a year ago, EnerNOC acquired Cogent Energy, also in California, in part to help expand its customer pool out west.

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Ember is one of those companies that defies a quick explanation. For starters, it has been around for nine years. And if all goes well, 2010 will be its first profitable one.

It has been a long climb for the Boston-based firm, which makes wireless networking technologies that help consumers and utility companies manage home energy consumption. Specifically, Ember focuses on making chips and software for low-power, low-bandwidth radio networks used for two-way communications. That sounds pretty tech-y, but as I learned when I caught up with the company last month, the technology is getting much closer to mainstream use.

Ember works with utilities, but sells its products primarily to companies like Itron (NASDAQ: ITRI) and Landis+Gyr, which make “smart meters” and other cutting-edge equipment for the electric grid. Smart meters are devices that let utilities predict peak energy usage times and adjust homes’ electricity use so as to conserve energy. Coupled with a smart display or thermostat, the devices also let consumers track how much electricity they’re using in their homes so they can save on their individual energy bills (and live greener lifestyles). What Ember provides, essentially, is the secure communication link between these homes and utilities.

The company was founded in 2001 by MIT alums Rob Poor and Andy Wheeler. Their original vision was to develop software for wirelessly networked sensors and control systems for supply-chain management, commercial buildings, and industrial applications like detecting temperature and fluid flow in oil pipes. (You can read my 2003 interview with Poor in Technology Review here.)

Along the way, Poor and Wheeler left the company to pursue other projects. But over the years, Ember hasn’t made so much of a radical change as some minor shifts in its priorities. First, it evolved into a chipmaker as well as a software maker, and has invested heavily in ZigBee, an open industry standard for wireless networking technology. And in 2006, around the time that Bob LeFort came on as CEO, Ember started to focus on energy management as its main commercial application.

Now that approach finally seems to be paying off, in terms of adoption—and revenue. “It’s the first time we’ve heard people talk seriously beyond small pilots of putting things inside the home,” LeFort says. “It’s not mainstream yet, not millions [of homes], but it’s beyond hundreds and a few thousand.”

Ember had its first profitable quarter in the first three months of 2010, and has followed that up with strong enough growth that LeFort predicts it will be profitable for the year. The company’s quarterly revenues have been in the $8-10 million range, he says, and it expects to have total sales of … Next Page »

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Retrofitting homes for energy efficiency may not be as expensive or unattainable as consumers may think, says Next Step Living founder and CEO Geoff Chapin. His Boston-based startup is working to bring energy improvements to more households by helping consumers making sense of the array of rebates and financial incentives available for such home renovations, and marketing the improvements to wider groups of homeowners, rather than individuals.

“We felt the big reason why people hadn’t taken action yet was that they didn’t know the real value of what people could achieve,” says Chapin, who’s worked as a consultant in the environmental space. “And they didn’t have the community to make it all happen. So we took a community approach.”

Next Step promotes its services through community-based initiatives with cities, nonprofit groups, and employers, like Boston-based EnerNOC. The startup performs home energy assessments and helps homeowners take the next steps in sealing up their houses to prevent heated or cooled air from escaping, a primary factor in driving up energy costs. One such partnership is with the Mass Audubon Society, where members get a discount on Next Step‘s energy efficiency services and track their reduced carbon footprint as a group.

As far as home improvements go, many consumers look to new windows or insulation to reduce their energy costs, but air sealing is an earlier step that can be more effective (and less expensive) than those other methods, Chapin says.

“In the past, people have had insulation put down in the home before the air sealing,” Chapin says. “That’s like wearing a knotted sweater. The air sealing puts down a windbreaker level beneath before the air flows through.”

Next Step starts home energy assessments by blowing air out of the front door of the house, creating a vacuum effect that causes air from outside to leak into the house wherever it can. The technicians then take an infrared camera and highlight the areas through the home where the most air is leaking—in other words, the spots most in need of air sealing.

“It creates a visual picture of what happens and shows the biggest areas for improvement,” Chapin says. “It helps consumers understand why a certain room is always cold and helps them understand what has previously been a black box for their home.”

NextStep comes back a few weeks later to perform the air sealing—by using a caulking gun and sealing cracks with foam—and insulation updates, and also helps consumers make sense of what … Next Page »

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When EnergySavvy rolled out its online energy audit tool in February, CEO Aaron Goldfeder thought it would appeal directly to consumers. But he quickly learned that the company had a second opportunity, one that the founding team had initially overlooked—government and non-profit programs, and utilities companies.

“When we launched EnergySavvy.com, we really had no plans of working with government programs or utilities. But they wanted to work with us,” Goldfeder says.

EnergySavvy’s online tool allows consumers to input information about their home for free online, and immediately gain access to information about how to retrofit homes to be more energy efficient, along with referrals to contractors who can do the work. Ideally, this ought to help consumers reduce their home’s carbon emissions, and enable people to save money on monthly utility bills. In a recent survey of 75,000 customers using the tool, EnergySavvy found that 80 percent of visitors who start the online energy audit complete it, and of those who complete the audit, the likelihood that they will request an energy efficiency contractor to come to their home increases by as much as 10-fold.

“Not only does it have a use, but it performs. Our mission is to help get homes more energy efficient, and one of the best ways we can do that is to get contractors into homes,” he says. “This tool does that and it will be the first of many.”

This success rate, according to Goldfeder, has caught the attention of utilities companies and government programs nationwide.

“We literally got cold calls from government programs and utilities,” he says. “As it turns out, this is a service that those programs and utilities need, and it fits in with our core mission of getting contractors into homes.”

When we last checked in with EnergySavvy in August, the startup had just announced its first government partnership, with Utah Home Performance. The project, which is backed by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Utah State Energy Program, uses EnergySavvy’s audit tool to help homeowners across the state of Utah gauge their own energy efficiency.

On October 7, the company rolled out its second utilities partnership, with the Energy Trust of Oregon, providing a self-serve tool for homeowners looking for pre-diagnosis information for their homes, and guidance to the resources and services provided by Energy Trust.

With two such deals inked in two months, Goldfeder says government projects and utilities companies have become a major part of EnergySavvy’s business plan moving forward—so much so, in fact, that last month it rolled out a new online audit tool specifically designed for such partnerships.

“This is not a one-off for us, it’s a core strategy,” he says.

While state governments in Utah and Oregon have turned into enthusiasts for the EnergySavvy auditing tool, the company hasn’t had much luck where it is actually based, in Washington state.

“Initially we had some trouble,” Goldfeder says. “As a local company, we had talked to some folks at local utilities and programs, and I think the practical interest was lukewarm. He remains hopeful, however, that Washington utilities will come around as the company gains traction, and legislation continues to provide more incentives for local utilities to get on board with federal energy efficiency standards.

Up until now EnergySavvy has been so busy working to service the customers it already has, according to Goldfeder, that it put local projects on the back burner, so to speak. But that won’t last much longer—Goldfeder is eager to churn out more partnerships, like the two with Utah and Oregon, both nationally and, hopefully, a little closer to home.

“Gratefully we’ve had more customers interested than we know what to do with,” he says, adding, “We would love nothing more than to really help programs and utilities in their region hit even higher cost effective savings goals.”

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Octobers have been cruel to San Diego.

The infamous Cedar Fire started on a Saturday evening, Oct. 25, 2003, and raced more than 30 miles from the Cleveland National Forest into the San Diego suburbs by the next morning. The firestorm destroyed 2,232 homes and killed 15 people before it was contained nine days later. Then there was the Witch fire of 2007, part of a cluster of wildfires that erupted on October 21, killed seven, and destroyed 1,500 homes and forced the evacuation of 500,000 residents throughout San Diego County. That was a bigger evacuation than in New Orleans in 2005, when Hurricane Katrina attained its dubious distinction as the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history.

Still, we’re getting better at dealing with firestorms in San Diego—and natural disasters in general—as innovations in sensor technologies, wireless networks, and predictive analytics have helped provide more accurate forecasts and better warnings. And much of the technology is being developed in San Diego.

Earlier this month, for example, San Diego Gas & Electric officials held a press briefing to explain that the utility had spent $1.1 million over the past year to add 93 anemometers (for measuring wind speed) to an existing network of 16 radio-automated weather stations throughout San Diego County. As a result, San Diego County now has the densest network of weather instrumentation in the country, according to Brian D’Agostino, a full-time weather forecaster hired by SDG&E last year.

The increased instrumentation gives SDG&E’s operations center more detailed information about wind conditions in specific locales. Utility regulators allow SDG&E to shut off power to specific transmission lines when local wind speeds exceed 56 mph, according to Dave Geier, SDG&E’s vice president of electric transmission and distribution. Wind speeds above 56 mph increase the odds that blowing debris or swaying trees will bring down a power line, according to utility officials.

A more sophisticated wireless sensor network, such as the High Performance Wireless Research and Education Network developed by researchers at UC San Diego, serves as a model of the type of network that could provide even more data, including imagery, that could help in the prediction of and response to disasters, according to Hans-Werner Braun of the San Diego Supercomputer Center. With funding from the National Science Foundation, Braun says the network demonstrates how a remote sensing systems can be effectively networked throughout remote areas of San Diego, Riverside, and Imperial Counties. Braun, who is overseeing the project, has described it as a wireless backbone that uses Internet routers on mountaintops, interconnected via wireless links.

Braun, who was the chief network architect for the satellite network conceived by Bellevue, WA-based Teledesic in the 1990s, uses the system for … Next Page »

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For Californians who want to make their houses greener and more energy-efficient, installing solar panels is often the first strategy that comes to mind. And there are many innovative Bay Area companies ready to help people do that, as I’ll describe in a story coming later this week. But Recurve president Matt Golden argues that solar is probably the last energy-related investment most homeowners should be making, not the first

“We are 100 percent pro-renewable energy, but you need to do things in the right order,” says Golden. “Before you install a new furnace, you put in the right insulation. Before you install 6 kilowatts of solar panels, you do efficiency improvements—and then you might need only 3 kilowatts to achieve the same result.”

It’s not very green, in other words, to put solar panels on top of a house that leaks heat all through the winter and cool air all through the summer. San Francisco-based Recurve, which Golden founded in 2004, will help you get your energy-wasting house in order before you think about bigger investments like solar panels.

Recurve is one of hundreds of energy efficiency retrofitters springing up around the country these days. But it’s perhaps one of the most high-tech, relying on software of its own design to systematize the process of home energy auditing.

Recurve’s technicians will go through your house room by room, testing factors that affect energy efficiency, such as airtightness, and feeding the data into laptops that run a physics simulation of the whole house. Once they’ve figured out how much you can save on energy bills by adding more insulation, sealing more ducts, and replacing outdated lighting, heating, and air conditioning equipment, they can do the actual work too—they’re certified builders. They’ll also help you pay for the work through zero-money-down, low-rate home financing packages.

But what really sets Recurve apart is its engineering-driven outlook on what it calls “home performance contracting.” These guys are the Amazon or the McKinsey of the energy retrofitting business, motivated by the conviction that a little data goes a long way, as long as it’s accurate. (Golden says Recurve’s retrofitting cost quotes are binding—if it ends up costing more to reach the promised efficiency improvements, Recurve eats the difference.)

While the company currently serves a relatively small market—just the counties surrounding San Francisco Bay—it’s got big ambitions. With around 65 staffers, Recurve is already the largest retrofitter on the West Coast, “and we intend to keep growing,” says Golden. The company is active on the policy front, pushing for more incentive programs like the $2,000 in efficiency rebates available to each San Francisco homeowner from the city government, the $3,500 newly available from Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), and the Home Star Retrofit Act wending its way through the U.S. Congress. But it’s Golden’s long-term vision for Recurve that’s really audacious.

The company has 10 retrofitting crews out in the field and a bevy of software developers back in its Mission Street offices, and in a way every home retrofitting job they do is a rehearsal. Eventually, Golden thinks, the day will come when Recurve is hired not by individual homeowners, but by utilities. His vision is that utilities will pay contractors to retrofit thousands of homes at a time, bringing about reductions in energy demand that will help them match generating capacity with expected loads for far less money than it would take to … Next Page »

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For the second month in a row we’re compiling all recent Seattle-area tech and biotech deals—”under the radar” and otherwise—into one comprehensive overview of all financings for the month. As always, the information is based on data provided by our partner, New York-based private company intelligence platform CB Insights, and our own prior coverage. And just as in June, the July data shows a clear trend: the majority of the local venture and angel-backed investments are going to the healthcare sector, which includes biotech.

Of the 17 deals Washington companies saw over the month of June, seven of them were in the healthcare sector, amounting to $62.5 million of the $81.7 million invested overall.  Compare this to the $104.3 million raked in locally in June, of which biotech companies nabbed $41.1 million, and it’s easy to see that the healthcare sector is leading in terms of regional financings. But whereas the energy and utilities and computer hardware and services sectors trailed close behind healthcare in June, no other sector was even close to bringing in the same amount of funding in July. The electronics sector trailed far behind with $5.8 million in financing, and the business products and services sector was close to follow with deals totaling $5.4 million.

The Internet sector came in fourth with $4 million in financing. (The Northwest Open Access Network did nab $54.5 million in federal stimulus money to expand high-speed broadband service across Washington state, but as this is grant money and not investment financing, it is not included on the list). Software took fifth place, with $2 million, and the mobile and telecommunications sector took a distant sixth place with $1.3 million in funding.

Perhaps the most shocking result has to do with the energy and utilities sector, which only brought in $0.69 million in July—the only sector to drop below the million-dollar mark—compared to the $35.8 million they raked in back in June. The computer hardware and services, risk and security, industrial, automotive and transportation, and gaming sectors brought in no funding at all in July.

We reported on a number of the larger deals that came through in July, including the $32 million Seattle-based Immune Design raised in Series B funding for the development of a new generation of vaccines. This deal, the second-largest venture deal in Washington state this year so far (behind the $40 million nabbed by Seattle-based Calistoga Pharmaceuticals in June) is just another indication of the healthcare sector’s leading role in Washington state investments. Further evidence: Uptake Medical’s $17.5 million investment for the sale of its emphysema treatment device, and Integrated Diagnostics $10 million deal, the second of its three-part, $30 million Series A.

On the tech side, contact-organizing software developer Gist raised an additional $4 million from Vulcan Capital and the Foundry Group. There were also a few interesting deals you may not have heard of, including a $690,000 round of equity that Seattle-based General Biodiesel, one of the first cleantech companies to set up shop at the McKinstry Innovation Center, brought in.

Here’s the full list of July’s equity-based deals, both under the radar and on it:

July also saw a few startups raising cash through deals based on debt, options, and/or warrants, rather than equity, including mobile software company Dashwire, which brought in over $515,000 in July from an undisclosed investor. (CEO Ford Davidson says the mobile app space is a “market that’s on fire.”) Those seven transactions, worth a combined $14.5 million, are listed below.

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There’s a new cleantech player in town. As we and other media outlets reported last week, Watertown, MA-based A123Systems (NASDAQ: AONE) has spun out a new company called 24M Technologies, which is developing a new kind of energy storage system that combines aspects of lithium-ion and flow battery technologies. The company announced today it has raised $10 million in Series A venture capital from Charles River Ventures and North Bridge Venture Partners. It also said it is collaborating with MIT and Rutgers University on a project supported by a $6 million grant from ARPA-E, the relatively new research agency within the U.S. Department of Energy.

The announcement is a strong PR push for Cambridge, MA-based 24M as a separate entity, but the company isn’t giving many details about its technology or business strategy just yet. A123 and North Bridge Venture Partners did not respond to requests for comment last week. (It’s not totally clear to me why A123 would spin this company out instead of keeping it in-house, where it would seem to have enough resources.)

Here’s what we know so far. 24M’s technology originated at A123, the lithium ion battery maker, and was further developed at MIT. It combines aspects of rechargeable batteries, fuel cells, and flow batteries. A flow battery pumps liquid electrolyte (often stored in external tanks) through an electrochemical cell to produce electricity. 24M says it is targeting energy-storage applications such as transportation—presumably hybrid and electric vehicles—and the power grid.

The latter is certainly a long-term problem in renewable energy; solar power and wind farms won’t go very far without more efficient ways to store the electricity generated. It sounds like 24M, like many other companies, is looking to develop technology that will store more energy in a given amount of space, for less cost than existing batteries.

A123 has an unspecified equity stake in 24M, which is led by president and co-founder Throop Wilder, who is a veteran of the IT world. Wilder was previously involved with Crossbeam Systems and American Internet Corp, among other tech companies. His fellow 24M co-founders are MIT scientists Yet-Ming Chiang (co-founder of A123) and W. Craig Carter.

“We believe that 24M’s technology has the potential to reduce energy storage costs for transportation and grid applications, and we look forward to helping the company as it leverages our research innovations for the development of commercially viable systems,” said A123’s CEO, David Vieau, in a statement.

Some other interesting details about 24M have been reported elsewhere. For those interested in the technical aspects, Martin LaMonica of CNET pointed to a patent for a “redox flow device” filed by Chiang, Carter, and others on behalf of A123 and MIT. This may or may not be related to the technology that 24M is working on. And 24M’s Wilder told Scott Kirsner of the Boston Globe that he originally met Chiang through North Bridge (which invested in A123), while Wilder was an entrepreneur-in-residence at Charles River. Wilder also said that 24M will be expanding to 10 to 20 employees within the next six months.

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