Another Take At Zero-Energy Buildings: Optimum Energy’s Nathan Rothman (Part 5)

SM: Based on your technology, what is your estimate of an overall energy impact? What percentage of energy reduction could you provide?

NR: If our technology were to be implemented in half of the buildings in the United States which it is capable of working on, we would take the equivalent of 145 million cars off the road. If our technology were employed in all of the buildings in Manhattan, we would save enough electricity to light four of the boroughs [of New York City]. The payback for our installation is 18 to 36 months. That implies a 30% to 60% ROI. How many businesses make that ROI on dollars invested?

In some aspects, we could be seen as the poster boy for the green movement. We employ people. We are looking for anybody we can find who has technical skills in our area. We have been growing by 100% to 200% every year. Our projects pay for themselves over time. We reduce carbon and greenhouse gasses. We reduce water consumption by 11% to 14%.

SM: What has been your revenue progression since you commercialized in 2006?

NR: We have been more than doubling every year. We are under $10 million right now.

SM: How did you finance this company?

NR: The first year I financed it myself. Afterwards I went out and found angel investors. I raised $500,000 in the second year from individual investors and $500,000 from a private equity fund in Seattle. We have had two rounds since then, each time for $5 million. Those rounds have never gotten out of the boardroom. We have provided valuations that we determined based on market, M&As, and trading companies.

SM: Do you expect to conduct more fund-raising?

NR: We had our first profitable month recently. We have five other products that we would like to add to the mix. Electing to raise more money will depend on how we proceed with those products.

SM: What are the other products?

NR: The first is a chiller product. Our second product is an airside product managing the air handler fans. We did a $1.3 million implementation at the San Diego Airport that had a nine-month payback. Our third product is performance assurance where we monitor a plant live over the Web. We guarantee the performance of our plants.

We have a dashboard for C-level executives that shows electricity savings on a dollar basis and a comparison of how the plant operated before our technology was implemented versus how it was operating after installation. We have built in redundancy. We have a bunch of data centers that cannot have any failure. Our device tells the building automation system how to operate the building. If for some reason there is loss of communication, it reverts to the old way the building was operated. That system shows water savings, electricity savings, and greenhouse gas savings, in a very simple dashboard that a CFO or CEO can look at and see how a building, or group of buildings, is doing.

We also show diagrams of the inside of the plant. We show the chillers and fans and how they are operating. We can also show data trends and provide predictive maintenance on these plants. We know well in advance when something is going to malfunction. We run our own server farm, which allows us to trend and keep this data for years and years.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Another Take At Zero-Energy Buildings: Optimum Energy’s Nathan Rothman
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