In the News
Under the Radar: 5 Great Cleantech Companies to Watch Sustainable Industries
Stacy Feldman
May 31, 2010
Demand response company CPower may not be the "sexiest" cleantech startup out there, but it is saving massive amounts of megawatts and improving many companies' bottom lines by moving energy consumption loads to less expensive periods.
New York-based CPower turns commercial buildings into electricity generators by getting its 1,500 commercial customers to cut back on energy during peak periods and selling the saved kilowatts to utilities when the grid is under stress. Cash is the lure for clients: Almost all the money CPower earns goes right back to them. Owners of a 50-story Manhattan tower, for instance, can save up to $30,000 per year, says Gary Fromer, CPower's CEO. In Texas, customers are getting checks for 15 percent to 20 percent of the totals spent on electricity. "That's in the millions of dollars in some cases," Fromer says.
With paybacks like that, it is not hard to understand why CPower is booming. Two years ago, the megawatts it managed were limited to the Northeast. Now the company has gone nationwide with some 800 megawatts of demand response under curtailment and is No. 3 in the demand response arena behind public companies EnerNOC [Nasdaq: ENOC] and Comverge [Nasdaq: COMV]. "In the demand response space, startups like CPower could have the ability to do as well as or even better than EnerNOC," says Mamoon Hamid, a principal at U.S. Venture Partners.
The firm, founded in 2000 as ConsumerPowerline and rebranded in 2008 as CPower, has raised $35 million from Mayfield Fund, Expansion Capital, Bessemer Ventures, Schneider Electric Ventures, New York City Investment Fund and Intel Capital.
Its client list includes some of the nation's biggest retailers seeking to cut their energy footprints-from Wal-Mart to Sears Holdings Corp. (Nasdaq: SHLD) to name a couple. And now CPower is setting its sights beyond the United States.
"We have the opportunity to be a global business," Fromer says.