X

Clean Urban Energy raises $7 million

A Chicago start-up scores Series A funding for its thermal-energy efficiency software platform and services.

Candace Lombardi
In a software-driven world, it's easy to forget about the nuts and bolts. Whether it's cars, robots, personal gadgetry or industrial machines, Candace Lombardi examines the moving parts that keep our world rotating. A journalist who divides her time between the United States and the United Kingdom, Lombardi has written about technology for the sites of The New York Times, CNET, USA Today, MSN, ZDNet, Silicon.com, and GameSpot. She is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not a current employee of CNET.
See full bio
Candace Lombardi
2 min read
Clean Urban Energy

Chicago-based Clean Urban Energy has raised $7 million in Series A funding, the company announced today.

The company has developed a software platform, and the monitoring and analytic services to go with it, that take advantage of a building's thermal mass and thermal-energy storage (TES) to make it run more efficiently and save on energy costs.

Clean Urban Energy says its software analytics platform can reduce the expense of a building's heating, ventilation, and air conditioning energy use by 15 percent to 30 percent.

"By aggregating and optimizing the thermal storage properties of multiple buildings, CUE unlocks valuable transmission and distribution capacity for utilities and grid operators in the most constrained environment: the urban city," the company said in a statement.

Clean Urban Energy said that with this new funding it's about to go on a "road show" to showcase its software as a service to commercial buildings in major cities across the country. The trip will include New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Houston, according to the company.

Investors in the Series A round of funding were led by Rho Ventures, and by the Massachusetts-based Battery Ventures, known for its successful investment in Akamai and its legendary pass on Facebook. As part of the deal, each of the firms will now have a seat on Clean Urban Energy's board.

The interest in thermal-energy storage management software analytics should not be surprising. Pike Research released a report today saying it expects the North American TES industry to grow into a $123 million business by 2016.