Serious Materials, a company that has built a reputation for energy efficient windows and glass, announced that it is moving into the building management market.
The company unveild SeriousEnergy Manager, a software-as-a-service platform that provides building owners and property managers with continuous monitoring, analysis, optimization and control of overall energy usage in commercial buildings.
Serious said it already manages more than 60 buildings in the U.S. and India with software, which it says can provide fast energy savings of 10% to 15%.
“With 5 million commercial buildings in the U.S. alone, there is a huge opportunity to save money today," Kevin Surace, CEO of Serious Materials said. "This is one of the most important offerings from our company in our history.”
According to the EPA, an average 30% of the energy used in commercial buildings is wasted at energy costs of more than $100 billion per year in the U.S. alone.
SeriousEnergy Manager is a web-based platform that integrates with building systems to continuously monitor energy usage. Based on proprietary algorithms, SeriousInsight™ advanced analytics integrates occupancy analysis, historical and external data to deliver real-time insight into energy usage and establish baselines, trends, and forecasting of energy consumption. The always-on service identifies ongoing, straightforward opportunities to save energy and optimize building system efficiencies.
The core technology of SeriousEnergy Manager™ originated from Serious Materials’ earlier acquisition of Valence Energy.
“Using the SeriousEnergy Manager’s advanced analytics at our headquarters enables us to go beyond basic energy monitoring to achieve greater energy savings,” said Anders Axelsson, senior vice president at smart grid Echelon (Nasdaq: ELON). “The fact that it can be very quickly implemented using Echelon’s SmartSever to get energy information makes it an ideal solution for energy management and commissioning in commercial buildings.”
Serious Materials is also in the process of raising $56 million in funding, according to a Greentech Media story. The company raised $60 million in a C Series a year ago.
The commercial energy management systems market is expected to surpass $6 billion by 2014, according to a recent analysis.