He built a business around predicting energy consumption and getting homeowners off fossil fuels. So, naturally, the company’s first acquisition is a startup that tracks power at a granular level.
Seal did not disclose the terms of the deal, but said in a statement that the acquisition of Burlington, Vermont-based Infisence will help it “reduce domestic energy waste.”
Headquartered in Manhattan, it oversees packaged financing and electrification upgrades, such as replacing oil or gas boilers with electric heat pumps and insulation. Ridding homes of fossil fuels lowers energy bills, lowers indoor emissions, and improves your health. You may have seen this topic in the news recently, as potential furnace regulations are now the latest spark in the culture war on clean energy.
In the meantime, Inefficiency sensors and software will monitor air quality in addition to energy use in buildings, and Sealed plans to share such air quality data with customers online.
It is unique in that it is pre-sealed for installation and weather. Instead, the machine learning algorithms charge a fixed fee based on the energy it predicts homeowners will save over time. If Seal underestimates the energy use of homes, it eats up the costs – so the predictions need to be understated.
“The lifeblood of our company is our ability to predict people’s energy use over time, and that’s based on good access to data,” co-founder and CEO Lauren Salz said in a call with TechCrunch. Currently, Seled’s algorithms rely on monthly energy data from utilities, but foruying InfiSense will give it “access to a deeper level of data from customers,” Salz said.
Packed has plans to install InfiSense sensors in some of its customers’ homes, but Salz said he doesn’t need them. The bundled data informs the forecast and allows curious customers to take a closer look at their energy use and air quality.
