Utilities pour money into startup Bidgely for home energy management

Dive Brief:

Analytics company Bidgely has closed a Series B round of funding for $16.6 million, with investors in both the United States and Europe signing on to expand the firm's HomeBeat energy management suite, Greentech Media reports.
The funding round was led by Constellation Technology Ventures, the venture capital arm of Exelon Corp., and also included new European utility investors E.ON and RWE.
The investments give Bidgely access to 65 million new homes worldwide for its energy management offerings.

Dive Insight:

Bidgely's announcement yesterday that it had secured $16.6 million in funding marks a significant growth in the company's reach, giving its home energy management suite access to 65 million new homes.

"The Series B round with European utility investment will allow us to aggressively expand our European presence and leverage our disaggregation technology and expertise in consumer behavior across an expanded product offering," Bidgely CEO Abhay Gupta said in a statement. “We’ll also use the funds to further expand the Bidgely team, which has already tripled in size since 2014.”

In just the last year, Bidgely said it has landed numerous multi-million dollar customer contracts that cover more than 3 million homes across four continents. The company is well-known for its disaggregation software that gives customers appliance-level energy consumption data, which is collected by analyzing energy use patterns of individual devices without the need for any extra hardwarde.

And the company is currently deploying 12 customer projects, including partnerships with ComEd, London Hydro and TXU. As the home energy management market grows – some estimates have it topping $22 billion in the next eight years – Bidgely said its "pipeline" has expanded 10 times year-over-year.

“Our success in helping utilities transition to a more consumer-centric engagement model has led to this investment by the very community that we serve. This will accelerate our already rapid market adoption with several full-scale deployments globally,” said Gupta. “Our HomeBeat platform gives consumers information and guidance at their fingertips and helps utilities earn customer loyalty in an evolving energy landscape.”