President Jeff Perlman talks to Fox Business about the future of the energy industry at the awards ceremony for the Take the Helm competition.
Video: http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/2245322172001/
Article: With $37T Energy Revolution on the Horizon, Firms Look to Cash In, by Adam Samson, March 22, 2013, FOXBusiness.
Excerpt:
Energy Transformation Transcends Utility Sector
But it’s not just utilities that are cashing in. Smaller companies that are marketing products and services that make incremental, yet still important, advances in energy efficiency are carving out a niche.
Enter Bright Power and ThinkEco. Both companies were finalists in the Take the HELM competition that featured growing, creative startups looking to set up shop in lower Manhattan.
Bright Power is an eight-year-old firm that assists apartment buildings in reducing power waste, coming into compliance with regulations and other energy consultancy services. The New York-based company sells proprietary benchmarking software it calls EnergyScoreCards that lets building owners input utility bills and compare the efficiency of their properties to others with similar characteristics.
“We can see the [buildings] that are worst, and the ones that are the best, and you see sometimes two three times difference between the best and the worst buildings,” Bright Power Founder and President Jeffrey Perlman said in an interview with FOX Business.
Perlman said Bright Power then focuses on the worst-performing buildings and makes “targeted interventions,” such as updating lighting, heating and sometimes installing solar systems to save operators money. Bright Power moves up the chain as power prices rise and efficiency gains provide big cost savings.
These relatively small adjustments are big business for Bright Power.
The company that employs 40 people took in revenue of $5 million last year. Meanwhile, sales have expanded 50% annually over the past five years, and Perlman said the company expects to double each year over the next half decade.
“We see power prices going up as an opportunity, especially as distributed generation like solar power and co-generation technologies get less expense,” Perlman said. “We see those curves crossing and really lots of opportunity for technologies and more efficiencies.”
Bright Power is presently seeking its first round of outside investment as it looks to ramp up its operations.