May 4, 2011 source: GreenTechMedia by Jeff St. John
The startup specializing in energy management microgrids for hospitals raises money to expand to other customers with critical power backup needs.
Blue Pillar, a startup that's built up an interesting niche in enabling hospitals to manage power for efficiency and demand response needs, has raised a $7 million series b round aimed at expanding its presence into the data center, military, education and manufacturing sectors.
Investors in the Series B round included Claremont Creek Ventures, Arsenal Venture Partners, Allos Ventures and OnPoint Technologies, the U.S. Army's venture capital fund. Previous unnamed investors also participated in the round, the company announced.
Blue Pillar has previously raised about $2.5 million in friends and family investment, CEO Kevin Kushman told me in an interview last year. Founded in 2006, the Indianapolis-based startup got its start in providing the hospital market with distributed power asset management, specifically, testing generators and other emergency power systems that keep critical medical services up and running during blackouts.
Because keeping the power up and running can be a matter of life and death, hospitals are required to have plenty of power backup and to make sure it operates properly in an emergency. But most of the time, that backup power goes unused, Kushman said. That makes hospitals a natural target for demand response capacity, or covering grid peak power needs in exchange for a fee…
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