Clean Urban Energy Welcomes New Senior Vice President
COMPANY STRENGTHENS SALES AND MARKETING ARM; HIRES NEW SVP OF CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT
CHICAGO, IL; October 6, 2011 – Clean Urban Energy (CUE), an energy storage and smart grid technology provider, today announced that Steve Schaefer has joined the company as Senior Vice President of Corporate Development. In his new role, Steve will develop corporate partnerships and strategic alliances.
Steve joins the CUE team with more than 25 years of energy industry leadership experience. Prior to CUE, he co-founded Enerlogics, a consulting company specializing in demand response, energy efficiency, and renewables solutions. There he served as Vice President of Sales and Marketing. Steve was previously Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing with EnergyConnect, a demand response technology company, and an executive with Silicon Energy, where he led product marketing and business development for the company’s enterprise energy management software applications in the Commercial/Industrial markets.
"I believe CUE's strategy of combining energy storage with the Smart Grid will enable businesses and institutions to realize substantial economic and environmental benefits," Schaefer said. "I'm excited to be part of one of the most innovative technology teams in the energy industry."
“CUE continues to aggressively build its sales channel and strategic partnerships and Steve will be integral to our success,” said CUE President, Phil Bomrad. “He has performed well in that capacity for many years and CUE will benefit greatly from his market knowledge, strategic vision, and business acumen.”
Steve’s appointment follows CUE’s recent Series A funding. In July, CUE announced that it had completed a $7M round with Battery Ventures and Rho Ventures to accelerate product development and global growth.
CUE RECRUITS NEW PRESIDENT
COMPANY BUILDS MOMENTUM FOLLOWING SERIES A FUNDING, HIRES FORMER ENERGY SERVICES DIRECTOR FROM SIEMENS
CHICAGO -- August 4, 2011 – Clean Urban Energy (CUE), an energy storage and smart grid technology provider, today announced that Phil Bomrad joined the company as President and COO. In his new role, Phil will focus on building out the sales and marketing organization, expanding the sales channel, and advancing the product roadmap.
Prior to joining CUE, Phil led Siemens Industry, Inc. Energy Services group, successfully launching and building a multimillion dollar energy services business that included energy monitoring, building commissioning, demand response, procurement consulting, and energy efficiency projects. At CUE, Phil will draw on his management and energy expertise to further refine CUE’s SaaS platform, an automated, scalable, energy-optimization system that exploits the thermal mass of commercial office buildings to optimize how a building uses energy.
“There is no doubt that there are significant grid constraints in several markets globally and investments in the smart grid continue at a record pace,” said Bomrad. “I am excited to help lead the company toward capitalizing on the unique value proposition the CUE platform brings to both building owners and grid participants”.
Prior to Siemens, Phil was an early executive at Tridium, where he held key roles in strategic planning, marketing, and product management. He was instrumental in the development and commercialization of Vykon Energy®, a software suite aimed at improving commercial building performance. Under Bomrad’s direction, Tridium established a robust sales channel with global resellers.
“Phil brings a unique skill set to CUE, having spent many years of service in building energy efficiency and software product development,” said Rich Earley, Clean Urban Energy CEO. “I’m confident he will prove to be a tremendous asset both to CUE and its channel partners and we’re excited to have him on board.”
Bomrad’s appointment comes on the heels of CUE’s recent Series A funding. Just last month, CUE announced that it had completed a $7M round with Battery Ventures and Rho Ventures to accelerate growth globally. The campaign will start off with a roadshow across several major US cities including New York, Los Angeles, Houston, and San Francisco.
See coverage in The Wall Street Journal Market Watch, Private Equity Hub and Green Technology World.
CLEAN URBAN ENERGY SECURES $7M SERIES A FROM BATTERY VENTURES AND RHO VENTURES
FIRST INSTITUTIONAL FUNDING TO HELP COMPANY INTEGRATE BUILDING OPERATIONS WITH ENERGY MARKETS, EXPAND BUSINESS TO TOP U.S. CITIES
CHICAGO -- July 7, 2011 -- Clean Urban Energy (CUE), an energy storage and smart grid performance optimization technology provider, today announced that it has secured $7 million in Series A financing. The investment was co-led by Battery Ventures and Rho Ventures, and will be applied to rapid product development and a multi-city expansion within the United States.
CUE is headquartered in Chicago and plans to use this new capital to embark on a road show fueling strategic development in four new major U.S. cities, including: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Houston. CUE’s software as a service (SaaS) platform is an automated, scalable, energy-optimization system that exploits the thermal mass of commercial office buildings to make buildings more energy efficient. By aggregating and optimizing the thermal storage properties of multiple buildings, CUE unlocks valuable transmission and distribution capacity for utilities and grid operators in the most constrained environment: the urban city.
“Smart building technologies are quickly becoming a significant new category of investment in cleantech, where energy efficiency meets mainstream IT,” said Jason Matlof, Battery Ventures Partner. “CUE’s a perfect example of this trend. Their solution uniquely combines proven building physics, a robust hosted software analytics platform, and a SaaS business model to deliver dramatic energy spending savings to commercial office buildings. Rich Earley is a proven entrepreneur and leader and we’re excited to partner with him to help grow CUE into a category leading, sustainable business.”
CUE essentially turns a “building into a battery”™ capable of energy storage on a multi-MW scale. CUE technology helps large commercial office buildings reduce building HVAC energy use and expenses by 15 – 30 percent, improve electric generation efficiency and environmental performance, and at a macro level introduces demand elasticity into electric grid markets.
“This funding is an important and critical milestone for our business, and will enable us to accelerate product engineering and customer acquisition during this next phase of rapid growth,” said Rich Earley, CUE CEO. “The market knowledge and relationships that our new investors bring to the table will help us rapidly penetrate the property management and owner community to become a leading technology provider in the market.”
With this round, Jason Matlof from Battery Ventures and Joshua Ruch from Rho Ventures will assume seats on CUE’s board of directors.
“CUE represents a major milestone in the convergence of the cleantech and IT industries,” said Joshua Ruch, Rho Ventures managing partner. “With a compelling SaaS-based solution, CUE is delivering a new standard of electricity savings that uses a building’s thermal mass and delivers significant megawatt storage capacity to grid operators. We believe CUE is well positioned to take advantage of a significant market opportunity in building energy efficiency.”
News of the funding has received national coverage. Read more in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune, TechCrunch, Venture Beat, GigaOM, CNET Greentech Blog, San Jose Buisiness Journal, VatorNews, and WIREDvc.
CHIEF SCIENCE OFFICER HENZE TO BE HONORED BY THE COLORADO CLEANTECH INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION
BOULDER -- April 27, 2011 -- The University of Colorado at Boulder announced yesterday that Building Systems Professor and CUE Chief Science Officer Dr. Gregor Henze is to be honored by the Colorado Cleantech Industry Association (CCIA) for his accomplishments in taking CUE technology from research to market. Dr. Henze will receive his award at an event to be held at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science on May 26.
The CCIA teamed with technology transfer offices at several Colorado universities to recognize leading researchers that have been involved in moving technologies into the marketplace. Researchers have been selected to receive awards in several categories including solar, wind, smart grid, bio-based fuels and chemicals, transportation, efficiency, energy storage, and water.
Learn more about the Colorado Cleantech Industry Association.
FERC ORDER 745 INCREASES BENEFITS OF CUE'S BUILDING-TO-GRID TECHNOLOGY
CHICAGO -- April 20, 2011 -- FERC Order 745 recognizes load reduction as equal in value to generation and mandates that both be compensated the full market price. Now, consumers will be able to further monetize energy efficiency measures by competing in electricity markets using “negawatts,” or units of energy saved.
The Order offers a compelling incentive for large commercial buildings in large grid-congested cities to participate in demand response energy markets every day. CUE provides a direct path for buildings to realize these new potential earnings by continuously and optimally integrating cooling operations with electric grid operations and markets—every hour of every day. Through price-responsive thermal mass control, CUE enables buildings to compete and dispatch against electric generation by creating price elasticity in these buildings’ electric demand that is continuous, dispatchable, and scalable. Now building owners will see greater rewards.
CUE-driven buildings will not only become significant assets to building owners, but also to the electric grid. While the grid can call on and reward these buildings for reducing loads, at times they will call on these buildings to absorb surplus. By optimally timing the cooling and discharge of a building’s thermal mass, CUE can create generating unit commitment and dispatch economies. Essentially, CUE converts commercial buildings into multi-MW thermal energy storage—a significant grid resource.
Read more from the FERC.
CUE SPONSORS 3RD ANNUAL ROBOTIC FOOTBALL COMPETITION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME
NOTRE DAME -- April 11, 2011 -- For the third year in a row, CUE is sponsoring the University of Notre Dame's Robot Football contest, developed to raise awareness for prosthetics research at the University.
Read more from the University of Notre Dame.
CUE PRESENTS AT CERA WEEK, RECEIVES ACCOLADES FROM FERC CHAIRMAN
HOUSTON -- March 10, 2011 -- Clean Urban Energy presented Thursday at CERA Week 2011. Their presentation, part of the Energy Innovation Pioneers series, was attended by delegates from Exelon, CERA Conference Chairman Daniel Yergin, and Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Jon Wellinghoff.
Following CUE's presentation, Mr. Wellinghoff, in his keynote speech later in the day, recognized CUE technology for the impact it will have on the electric industry. He said that widespread adoption of this technology could ultimately save billions of dollars for utilities and consumers. Mr. Wellinghoff predicted that it will be adopted all over the country and will become a new paradigm for the electric industry. In the future, he said, devices that can store energy, such as office buildings and all-electric vehicles, will be appropriately described not merely as cars or buildings but rather as assets.
CUE TAKES FIRST PLACE AT CLEAN ENERGY CHALLENGE
CHICAGO -- March 4, 2011 -- Clean Urban Energy was awarded first prize in the Clean Energy Trust's 2011 Clean Energy Challenge-- a business plan competition awarding $100,000 to top Illinois entrepreneurs with potential to bring new clean energy technology to the marketplace. More than 70 applications from across Illinois were submitted for businesses in all aspects of clean energy, from battery usage and solar panels to smart grid technology and biomass development. 10 companies were then selected to compete before a panel of judges-- including venture capitalists, coporate investors and business leaders-- at the Midwest Energy Forum March 3, 2011 at the University of Chicago's Gleacher Center.
The awards were presented by the Clean Energy Trust, a new organization whose purpose is to provide seed money and business advice to clean energy entrepreneurs and commercialize energy research coming out of Chicago-area universities and labs.
CUE TO PRESENT AT 2011 CERA WEEK
CHICAGO -- February 25, 2011 -- Clean Urban Energy announced today that CEO Rich Earley will present at 2011 CERAWeek, one of the world's premiere energy conferences, on Thursday, March 10 in Houston, Texas.
CUE was selected as one of the 2011 CERAWeek Energy Innovation Pioneers, a distinction given to dynamic companies offering some of the most innovative new technologies across the energy spectrum-- from oil and gas, coal, carbon management, biofuels, renewable and clean energy, power generation and energy efficiency. IHS CERA annually selects innovators based on their potential as game changers or drivers of step-function improvements in existing systems. CERAWeek will feature over two-hundred senior energy executives, government officials and thought leaders from the energy, policy, technology, and financial communities including President Bill Clinton, President George W. Bush, Former United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.
For more information on 2011 CERAWeek click here.
CUE COMPLETES LICENSING AGREEMENT WITH UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO
BOULDER -- February 24, 2011 -- Clean Urban Energy (CUE), a Chicago, IL-based company developing building efficiency software, has completed an exclusive licensing agreement with the University of Colorado (CU), granting the company the exclusive right to commercialize a software tool developed at CU's Boulder campus through a collaborative research program put in place by the University and CUE.
The software, jointly created by CU-Boulder architectural engineering professor Gregor Henze and CUE, is part of a software as a service (SaaS) platform that monitors the performance and electric demand of a building's heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning (HVAC) system in relation to its thermal mass (the mass in and of the building, such as concrete, furniture, and books). Once the software has captured how energy is stored and released by the building's thermal mass, it implements strategies that optimize the building's HVAC operations as a function of electricity prices, hourly temperatures, humidity, solar radiation and carbon emissions. Ultimately, CUE uses the thermal mass of these buildings as large-scale thermal energy storage for urban smart grids. This storage capacity introduces demand flexibility into electric grids, positively impacting the reliability of the grids themselves.
"Through this collaboration with Dr. Henze and the University, we have created, and will sustain industry and research leadership in clean energy," said Vince Cushing, Chief Technology Officer at CUE.
"We are very fortunate to have this partnership with Clean Urban Energy," added Kate Tallman, Director of Technology Transfer for CU-Boulder. "CUE provides Dr. Henze's technology with access to a real world test bed in Chicago and a ready path to market."
CUE NAMED AS FINALIST IN CLEAN ENERGY TRUST COMPETITION
CHICAGO — January 7, 2011 — The Clean Energy Trust has named CUE a finalist in their 2011 Business Plan Competition. Businesses from across Illinois submitted more than 70 applications for the competition, representing a wide variety of clean energy technologies ranging from battery usage and solar panels to smart grid technology and biomass development. CUE was selected as one of the top ten, and will compete in March for the $100,000 early-stage-business prize.
For more information on the Clean Energy Trust's 2011 Clean Energy Challenge, click here.
CUE PARTNERS WITH PJM ON REGULATION PROJECT
CHICAGO — October 1, 2010 — CUE announced today that it has teamed with PJM on a regulation demonstration that will prove the efficacy of CUE’s grid services capabilities through PJM’s Alternative Technology Resource (ATR) Program. The ATR Program is designed to unite alternative energy resources with the latest IT technologies and introduce them to PJM’s Energy, Capacity, and Ancillary Services Markets.
With CUE technology, large commercial buildings can provide regulation and spinning reserve services to PJM throughout both the cooling and heating seasons.
PJM uses its “Arcom Director” to communicate securely with “outstations,” which in this case are CUE- operated buildings. CUE plans to install the Arcom Director in one of its Chicago customer buildings and use the PJM regulation signal as a parameter in creating daily HVAC operations strategies. This will allow CUE to inject a PJM regulation and spinning reserve signal into the HVAC systems. The goals are: 1) to prove the ability to provide reliable services; 2) to define the character of the service that can be provided, e.g. hours of the day, kW per building, weather conditions, response speed, reliability, etc; and 3) to identify the best method of injecting regulation and spinning reserve signals into the HVAC systems.
Collected over the winter of 2010/2011, the project results will underlie a research program jointly conducted by CUE and the University of Colorado at Boulder to develop a systematic way to deploy the technology on a large scale across the United States. As a 2011 follow-on and with results in hand, Metropolitan Energy, LLC and CUE expect to deploy this technology in a more formal PJM demonstration across multiple buildings in the Chicago Loop.