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Stealthy startup Digital Lumens Inc. has decided to shine a light on itself, revealing its technology — a combination of LED lighting, wireless mesh networking and management software that the company says can reduce the electrical cost of lighting an industrial facility by as much as 90 percent.
Since it was founded in February of 2009, Boston-based Digital Lumens has taken in $11.3 million in funding through two rounds, and piloted its technology in a handful of facilities. The key to the way the company can cut power costs for its customers is that the individual LED-based lighting modules — which replace a large overhead incandescent of fluorescent light — can be each controlled to run on or off only at specific times or in response to specific cues, such as a person coming into its lighting zone. The idea is to stop warehouses or other large buildings from having to light up areas all day or night, when there isn’t anyone there needing the light.
“It’s about a $15 billion marketplace we are addressing initially,” said Tom Pincince, president and CEO of Digital Lumens. “The company has about 16 trial installations to demonstrate those savings to customers.”
While the company is buying some off-the-shelf components such as the LEDs in the lighting modules, the entire system was designed by Digital Lumens from the ground up, according to Pincince. He knows the networking end of the equation, having founded Brix Networks, and before that New Oak Communications. Digital Lumens' co-founder and CTO Brian Chemel brings the lighting control expertise, having been director of control product development at Color Kinetics. The second co-founder also hails from Color Kinetics, director of engineering Colin Piepgras, who was leader of the mechanical and concept development teams at Color Kinetics.
When Mass High Tech first covered Digital Lumens in May of 2009, they had just received their first funding round — $6.3 million from Flybridge Capital Partners, Black Coral Capital and Stata Venture Partners. At the time they were located in the offices of Groom Energy Solutions Inc. in Salem, which Pincince describes as serving as a type of incubator for Digital Lumens. The company — now with 15 employees — moved to Boston shortly after that and raised another round, worth $5 million, in December.
Pincince also credits Groom Energy with showing them that the company’s success hinged on getting their technology to a cost point that could give the customers a payback on the investment in three years or less.
According to Pincince, the average installation costs about $500,000 and out of the gate they can achieve that speed of return on investment for their customers.
“This payback issue, that was key. You can have all this whizbang things — ‘Gee I can turn my lights off with my iPod’ — but that was what Groom Energy brought to us and we took that to heart,” Pincince said.
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