FirstFuel Software raises $2.4 Million for Remote Building Energy Analysis

FirstFuel Software, the Waltham, Mass. – based provider of analytics software that tracks energy usage in commercial buildings, has recently announced the end of its series A of funding which has brought the company an amount of $2.4 million. This funding round has been led by Battery Ventures and Nth Power, with participation from individual investors. The money raised in this round of funding is intended to be used to accelerate the rhythm of development of the Rapid Building Assessment platform, which gives very precise information about the energy performance of commercial buildings.

The company specialises in tracking the energy usage in buildings without having to use energy-tracking devices such as smart thermostats and plugs, but by using information from utilities, which it afterwards combines with weather data, determining the temperature near the building, as to create a profile of the energy use for each building.

One of the spokesmen at FirstFuel stated the following: “The software analyzes available utility and weather data to create profiles of how the building uses energy, and makes the efficiency recommendations off of that. Plus, they do deep analytics on the whole building’s energy consumption, which provides them a view of end-uses, such as: lights, heating, cooling, plug loads and data centers.”

The recommendations FirstFuel makes can refer to retrofitting the building with more insulation or better lighting systems. The interesting thing is that the company makes all of these recommendations without sending a person to the building. The entire process of analysis is done through internet.

This means that the company does not necessarily function as a consultant, but that its interest is that of selling licenses to the utility companies which are interested in removing some strain on the power grid. One of the most relevant examples is that of the usage of air conditioning in a building. By retrofitting commercial buildings with better insulation systems and windows, the energy consumption of a building can be reduced from air conditioning units at peak load times, during those moments of the day when it is very hot and everybody is using the air conditioning unit.

Swapnil Shah, the co-founder and CEO of FirstFuel Software stated the following: “Utilities have had difficulty engaging their commercial customers and realizing energy efficiency savings on a large scale. The FirstFuel platform applies deep analytics to consumption data, delivering highly insightful profiles of energy-use at a speed and cost that enables scalable delivery across a large portfolio. We look forward to working with utilities to help them engage their commercial customers and achieve energy efficiency goals.”

Jason Matlof, the partner from Battery Ventures, declared the following: “FirstFuel Software has a profound opportunity to help the utility industry maximize their energy efficiency goals across commercial building portfolios. We look forward to supporting the company’s growth and are excited by FirstFuel’s vision of establishing the de facto information platform for large scale energy efficiency in commercial buildings.”