Statkraft Ventures, with the participation of ETF Partners, has led a USD5 million investment into European smart meter software company Greenbird.
Greenbird is a profitable and rapidly growing software vendor and IT integration specialist based in Norway.
The company has served utilities representing more than 80 per cent of the Norwegian market, and it is continuing to build its international customer base.
Its Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings Metercloud.io and Ghostwriter enable utilities to quickly implement flexible IT architectures for modern smart meter operations.
"At Statkraft Ventures we are well aware of the software integration challenge utilities are facing as the grid is becoming increasingly intelligent. In order to capitalise on the smart grid opportunity, the IT systems need to adapt quickly. Greenbird provides exactly that flexibility and delivers it conveniently as a cloud service. Having proven its case in Norway, we see a big opportunity for Greenbird to further expand globally," says Matthias Dill, managing director of Statkraft Ventures.
"What convinced us about Greenbird was the vision and energy of its team," says Arne Morteani, partner at ETF Partners. "They identified a real need in the market and leading utilities have already adopted their Metercloud.io service. We are delighted to provide additional capital to enable Greenbird's further growth."
"Traditional system integration is not suitable for smart meter operations," says Thorsten Heller, CEO at Greenbird. "What is needed is a brand new approach. Metercloud.io is a cloud-native integration platform that cuts integration times from six to 12 months to less than one month. More importantly, it creates a flexible, multi-vendor architecture that readily evolves as utilities seek to capture the more advanced benefits of smart meters."