According to yesterday's Washington Post, Gridpoint Inc., which sells computerized power backup systems, raised a $9M round Series A recently. The article mentions that "a few" venture capital firms including Advantage Capital Partners participated in the round, but that most of the round was raised from individual investors. There are a number of other interesting details as well:

• Gridpoint is raising another $6M in addition to the current round, to "increase production" and increase headquarters staff
  
• Revenues for 2006 are anticipated to be $10M, off of 2,000 units sold
  
• The appliance is about the size of a refrigerator, costs $6-16k (based upon the above revenue estimates, the channel must be taking a pretty big cut), is being sold directly to customers through hardware stores such as Lowe's, and in high-end versions can help manage on-site solar or wind resources.
• Where time of use pricing is in effect (which is certainly not a given, especially for residential and smaller commercial users), 10-15% electricity bill savings can be gained by moving electricity draw away from peak periods, and potentially by selling power back to the grid from the unit's storage.

The company's last raise was a $1.8M angel round in 2003. Given the pricing data given above, interested readers who want to put such a unit on their own home might contact Gridpoint to see if they can buy one direct from the company... probably not, unfortunately.