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Upstart energy management technology developer OutSmart Power Systems Inc. of Natick has raised $2 million in seed funding to get its newly-founded operations off the ground.
The funding round, which was preceded by $500,000 in financing from the firm’s original parent company Manifold Products LLC of Natick over the past two years, was provided by Bainco International Investors of Wellesley, The Clean Energy Venture Group of Brookline and Manifold Products. OutSmart Power Systems was spun out of Manifold Products, a venture engineering firm, in early 2008.
OutSmart’s technology aims to convert the electric systems of campuses and other commercial facilities into a communications network -- essentially a local area network (LAN) -- using broadband over power lines technology and running smart grid applications and other power management systems.
The system uses electrical outlets, switches and the equipment connected to such devices as network nodes, and provides an online management interface by which facility operators can manage and cut energy consumption, extend equipment life, monitor occupancy levels and even provide security data.
“The network is literally connected to everything of value in a facility, except the people,” said co-founder and CEO Kevin Johnson, who helped spin the company out of Manifold Products with vice president Stuart Nixdorff, a co-founder of thermal imaging technology developer RedShift Systems Corp. of Burlington.
“It’s a smart grid for campuses,” added Nixdorff.
Using a web interface to monitor the energy consumption of a given facility is not a new idea and has been the subject of several startups over the past 10 years, including Needham-based Sensicast Systems Inc. OutSmart’s differentiator, said officials, is its use of the existing electricity infrastructure of a facility, rather than a wireless mesh network. The system requires no rewiring and minimal hardware installations.
“I can teach an electrician to install it in a matter of hours,” said Johnson.
The company will complete its first pilot project -- in its own building in Natick -- by the third quarter of this year and has “five or six” other pilot tests in negotiations, most of them in New England, said Johnson.
Manifold Products, recently named a “Startup to Watch” by MHT and also based in Natick, takes the business plans of entrepreneurs and adds engineering, business development and investment. The firm, which specializes in electromechanical design, has spun out two other firms, invisible loudspeaker developer Emo Labs Inc. in Waltham and computer accessory developer Newton Peripherals LLC in Natick.
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