Viridity Energy has grown from 20 employees to 45 now, said Sashenie Hayman, its marketing coordinator, who herself joined about a month ago.
Why move? Closer access to software developers and other talent, Hayman said. In addition, it's easier to travel from Center City to New York and Washington, where many potential clients are, than from Conshohocken.
Founded in 2008 by Audrey Zibelman, the former chief operating officer of electric-grid operator PJM Interconnection L.L.C., Viridity Energy is a "smart grid" technology company. Most people think about fancy meters when they hear "smart grid." Viridity Energy does not make smart meters, but smart software that tries to optimize how large enterprises consume power and provides them a new revenue stream by sending unused power back to the grid.
You know if your employer participates in an electricity-demand response program when some lights go out and the air-conditioning is cut on hot days. Viridity's software goes beyond just addressing those peak power-demand times. Its clients include SEPTA, Drexel University, Thomas Jefferson University, and the Army's Fort Meade, the largest employer in Maryland.
Viridity Energy is also involved in one of four projects approved in September by the U.S. Energy Department and Israel for a load-management system that could control individual appliances in residential and commercial buildings. Its partner in the project is Greenlet Technologies, of Tel Aviv.
New York-based Braemer Energy Ventures and Silicon Valley-based Intel Capital invested $14 million in Viridity Energy in January.
Besides its Center City office, Viridity Energy also has small satellite operations in Seattle and San Diego.
Quotable
"This is not one of those solar-panel companies that in six months they're going to find is in trouble."
- Thomas D. O'Malley, chairman of PBF Energy Holding Co. L.L.C., speaking Friday to the elected officials, workers, and suppliers gathered to celebrate the restart of its 190,000-barrel-per-day oil refinery in Delaware City, Del.
Contact Mike Armstrong at 215-854-2980, marmstrong@phillynews.com, or @PhillyInc on Twitter. Read his blog, "PhillyInc," at www.phillyinc.biz
