With $40 million, Trilliant Rising Above Smart Metering Fray

Customers and cash: smart metering specialist Trilliant now has both of the two crucial elements needed to make it in the increasingly crowded smart metering market.

The Redwood City-based company (which should not be confused with the Linux specialist Trillian) has raised $40 million from Mission Point Capital Partners and zouk (no cap) ventures to help it expand into the smart metering market. Trilliant has already installed about 750,000 meters and participated in the large Hydro One deployment in Canada. It also has a relationship with Advanced Innovations to bring smart grid technology worldwide. (We spoke to the company earlier this year at the Freescale Technology Forum.).

So far, smart metering has been one of the most efficient paths to making money in green tech. These devices essentially turn down lights, shut off dryers and curb electricity demand in relatively unobtrusive ways. While homeowners or building owners can program many of these devices, some deals are structured so that the utility tinkers with your air conditioner remotely.  Commercial customers and households end up consuming less electricity (and get lower power bills) while utilities avoid brown-outs. If utilities can get enough customers in a region to sign up, they can also avoid building expensive peaker plants.

Two of the more successful greentech IPOs—Comverge and EnerNoc—were both focused on smart grid technologies.

The field, though, is becoming increasingly crowded. There are companies like Trilliant who have been making products for twenty years, but also a host of start ups. How many are there? Beats me. I ran out of fingers and toes a while ago, but put it this way: at every green tech conference, there are bound to be at least two smart metering companies.

And since many are basing their technologies around open standards like Zigbee, the battle won’t be won by touting a new, exotic technology. Instead, success will revolve around execution, funding and customer relationships.

With the Hydro One deal and the funding, you can argue that Trilliant is in the Magic Circle (or is it the Mystical Parallelogram?) Another company in that league is Tendril. Twenty utilities are tinkering with its smart metering technology and one is going to commercial deployment.

Other names to keep in mind: Threshold (which mostly focuses on the complimentary task of controlling devices within the home), Agilewaves and EnergyHub. And then there is the one everyone loves: Silver Spring Networks, which has hardware and software for monitoring neighborhood-wide consumption of power, gas and water. Think of it as a geographical hub for buildings serving as LAN points.