Few greentech startups can say with any credibility their potential consumer market numbers in the hundreds of millions. Even fewer can make that claim without then explaining how their carbon-eating algae won’t also eat whales and, oh yeah, we’re not sure because it’s still in the Petri dish. Silver Spring Networks clears both of these hurdles, and only then because it’s an IP networking startup masquerading as a greentech company. But simplicity and scalability are the name of the game and energy, like information, wants to be free. And what better way to build a smart grid than on an open-platform architecture?

Silver Spring Networks’s approach to the smart grid relies on real-time networking between energy consumers and energy suppliers on open-platform Internet protocols. On the utility side, Silver Spring’s products combine wireless networking with software-based monitoring and control applications, which let utilities manage and meter electricity, water, and gas usage. Because Silver Spring’s network architecture is open platform, the created networks are open to all vendors, giving us a glimpse of what a seamlessly integrated national grid may one day look like. Consumers benefit too with real-time access to energy usage and rate and load monitoring.

Adding IP networking to the existing power grid is an essential element of building renewable capacity, while also helping to modernize and build efficiencies into a hopelessly outdated system. From the VC perspective, greentech companies like Silver Spring Networks are ideal investments – they don’t require massive capital injections for factory construction, the technology is available now, and the potential consumer impact is massive. This is why firms like Foundation Capital, JVB Properties, and Edison Electric Institute have invested approximately $67.4 million in the company since 2007, including a $17.4 million round in April 2008. The company also signed a deployment contract with Florida Power & Light in 2007 to build the largest IP-based power grid in the country. And, like its smart grid brother GridPoint (another GTM Top 10 Startup) Silver Spring Networks was honored by the World Economic Forum as a Technology Pioneer at its annual meeting in January 2008.

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