2011 wasn’t a boom year for venture and corporate investing in smart grid technology companies. According to The Cleantech Group’s latest figures for 2011, in terms of dollar amounts invested, smart grid tech companies saw less backing in 2011 than in previous years. In terms of number of deals, 2011 saw about the same number of deals in smart grid tech companies as in 2010, and slightly more than in the years before 2010.
There’s a lot of numbers in the graph above, but one thing is clear: there wasn’t a major investing rush into smart grid technology last year. I think that had to do with a few things:
- Utilities take a long time to install smart grid infrastructure, cautiously moving from small pilots, to larger pilots, to even larger pilots and finally a commercial scale.
- The first wave of the smart grid is an infrastructure play. The big companies like the Silver Spring Networks and Ciscos and Itrons need to install the networking infrastructure and only then can the smaller application players grow around the network.
- The build-out of the smart grid in the U.S. has been delayed by some early-mover utilities facing marketing and consumer push-back problems, as well as the recession.
- There are only so many companies that can secure deals with utilities. It puts a limit on the utility side of the market.
- There was probably an ove- investment into smart grid startups in the boom cleantech years of 2007 and 2008. The smart grid market in the U.S. wasn’t all that mature back then.


Comments have been disabled for this post