Monday, December 5, 2011

Slater boosts investment in VCharge under $1.9M round

By Rodney H. Brown

Rhode Island smart grid company VCharge Inc. has taken in a new $100,000 funding from the state’s tech investing arm, the Slater Technology Fund, bringing the round it is part of up to $1.9 million.

According to a release from Slater, the new money brings the total it has put into VCharge to $250,000, including the initial $150,000 seed stage funding placed in May.  The total of $1.9 million includes investments from the Clean Energy Venture Group, Launchpad Venture Group and EOS Ventures, Slater stated.

VCharge will use the funds to launch a number of pilot projects this winter to demonstrate its cloud-based Transactive Load platform technology that allows electric thermal storage heaters, electric cars, and other devices to participate in load-demand energy usage.

In addition, VCharge recently named Gene Zimon, former CIO of Massachusetts utility NSTAR and current president of consulting firm EDGE, to its board of directors, the release noted. 

VCharge was listed as a Mass High Tech “Startup Watch: Five you should follow” company in January.  Last December, the company raised $600,000 of what at the time was a planned $1.1 million equity round of financing, according to a regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.