Toronto’s Smart Energy Instruments, a company that develops electronic chipsets with high-precision, real-time monitoring capabilities for smart grid applications in the electric utility industry, has raised $5.6 million.
The round is being led by 3M New Ventures, along with Venturelink Funds, ArcTern Ventures (formerly MaRS Cleantech Fund) and the Ontario Capital Growth Corporation.
The investment will accelerate SEI’s product development and commercialize a number of opportunities for the deployment of SEI’s Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs) core chipset by manufacturers.
“We are honored that 3M is joining our team of investors and proud of this confirmation of SEI’s progress over the last year.” said CEO Jeff Dionne. “We’ve hit several key milestones in our company’s growth, and the utility market is now primed to take full advantage of our solutions to achieve what they have been promising with smart grid technologies. We see 3M as an important strategic partner to jointly develop and commercialize innovative solutions for utilities and electrical equipment manufacturers.”
A release claimed that aging grid infrastructures and the need for higher reliability and efficiency are driving the installation of more precise monitoring devices. Furthermore, the “exponential growth in variable renewable energy generation, particularly solar and wind, is…altering system dynamic behaviour, necessitating…real-time measurements to operate the grid.”
According to a new report from Navigant Research, cumulative worldwide electric utility spending on asset management and condition monitoring systems will total close to US $50 billion from 2014 to 2023.
SEI’s core chipset is a powerful computational platform with measurement precision and low power consumption, which can be directly integrated into today’s IEDs.
It brings OEMs and utilities an advantage in functions such as power quality monitoring and fault detection.