MIT Startup Closes New Financing Round to Revolutionize Building Energy Efficiency
Essess has now raised over $10 million to commercialize its mobile thermal imaging technology and deliver actionable advice on improving millions of building envelopes and HVAC systems across the United States.
BOSTON, Nov. 20, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Essess, Inc. (www.essess.com) has developed the leading mobile thermal imaging technology and data analytics pipeline to identify and quantify energy losses across millions of buildings. This financing, which brings the total amount raised by the company since its founding in 2011 to $10.75 million, was led by existing investors Vocap Investment Partners, DFJ Athena, and Constellation Technology Ventures (the venture capital arm of Exelon Corporation) with participation from a number of new investors, including Tamarisc, a venture capital firm focused on building technologies, and the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, the mission of which is to accelerate clean energy technologies in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
The company closes this financing round having recently completed field trials with its early deployment partners, including the U.S. Department of Defense. These partners validated the company's ability to deploy mobile thermal imaging that delivers actionable advice to motivate upgrades in building envelopes and HVAC systems. The funding enables the company to scale its technology across millions of homes and businesses in partnership with electric and gas utilities, competitive energy suppliers, large energy service companies, and building materials and service providers.
"Essess' cutting-edge technology is a revolutionary way to collect and analyze data, empowering home and building owners to see how they're using energy and target inefficiencies," said Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC) CEO, Alicia Barton. "MassCEC is proud to partner with Essess on this exciting endeavor."
Essess deploys vehicles with roof-mounted imaging systems that boast multiple long wave and near infrared cameras, LIDAR devices, GPS units, and a range of other sensors. Combined with market-leading computer vision machine learning algorithms and heat flow analytics, Essess is able to identify automatically across large physical territories any abnormal heat signatures in buildings or other physical assets. "Essess is the only company in the world today that can collect and analyze energy loss information in buildings across entire cities and states in a matter of weeks," said Tom Scaramellino, Chief Executive Officer. "We are thrilled to have the support of our existing investors and new investors like MassCEC to help us commercialize this technology across the 130+ million buildings in the United States and abroad."
Essess packages its thermal imaging technology in a number of software subscription and end customer marketing products. These products include a web portal that displays interactive energy loss maps of large physical territories; a customer relationship management tool that offers an entirely new category of customer analytics and measure recommendations; and a turnkey energy efficiency program for utilities that delivers energy audit reports via direct mail, email, and the web. "Essess has spent a number of years in research and development to make mobile thermal imaging technology a viable commercial application in energy efficiency markets," said Sanjay Sarma, Founder and Chairman of Essess and Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. "We are thrilled to reach this critical commercialization milestone and begin scaling our delivery of a compelling suite of products into energy efficiency markets."
About Essess
Essess is the leading mobile thermal imaging provider for the energy efficiency industry. Essess' technology delivers actionable advice on how to improve building envelopes and HVAC systems across large physical territories to supercharge energy efficiency efforts and building investment decisions. Essess deploys this technology primarily to electric and gas utilities, energy service companies, large energy consumers, competitive energy suppliers, and building materials manufacturers and retailers. For more information, visit: http://www.essess.com.
About MassCEC
The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC) is dedicated to accelerating the success of clean energy technologies, companies and projects in the Commonwealth, while creating high-quality jobs and long-term economic growth for the people of Massachusetts. Since it began operating in 2009, MassCEC has helped clean energy companies grow, supported municipal clean energy projects, and invested in residential and commercial renewable energy installations to help create a robust marketplace for innovative clean technology companies and service providers. For more information, visit: http://www.masscec.com.
About Constellation
Constellation is a leading competitive retail supplier of power, natural gas and energy products and services for homes and businesses across the continental United States. Constellation's family of retail businesses serves more than 2.5 million residential, public sector and business customers, including more than two-thirds of the Fortune 100. Baltimore-based Constellation is a subsidiary of Exelon Corporation (NYSE: EXC), the nation's leading competitive energy provider, with 2013 revenues of approximately $24.9 billion, and more than 35,000 megawatts of owned capacity comprising one of the nation's cleanest and lowest-cost power generation fleets. Learn more at www.constellation.com or on Twitter at @ConstellationEG.
About Tamarisc
Tamarisc is an impact-oriented venture capital firm that invests in and supports early-stage companies across two technology sectors that have enormous social and economic impact around resource consumption but receive a disproportionately small share of investable capital: green real estate and resource efficiency—primarily technologies that facilitate responsible consumer behavior. Tamarisc is managed by a team that combines operational as well as investment expertise in real estate, technology, and energy. For more information, visit: http://www.tamarisc.com.
About Vocap Investment Partners
Vocap Investment Partners provides growth capital to technology companies in select high potential verticals, including: Enterprise Software, Ad Tech, Marketing Automation, Mobile, Internet of Things, Healthcare IT and E-commerce. For more information, visit: http://www.vocappartners.com.
Media Contact
Navi Singh, Essess
[email protected]
(857) 445 - 4135
SOURCE Essess, Inc.
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