BOSTON — Essess Inc., which has developed a mobile thermal imaging technology and data analytics program to identify and quantify energy losses across numerous buildings, has completed a new financing round, which brings the total amount raised by the company since its founding to $10.75 million.
The company said it closes this financing round having recently completed field trials with its early deployment partners, including the U.S. Department of Defense. Essess said these partners validated its ability to deploy mobile thermal imaging that delivers actionable advice to motivate upgrades in HVAC systems and building envelopes. The funding will enable 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 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 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (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.”
For more information, visit www.essess.com.
Publication date: 12/8/2014
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