Varentec, a provider of power control solutions for the electric grid, has closed US$8m in Series B funding from Bill Gates and Khosla Ventures. The capital will fund the production roll-out of the startup's power monitoring, control and data analytics solutions for US and international electric utilities and for a number of industrial applications.

Deepak Divan, co-founder, president and CTO of Varentec, said the company's “intelligent, decentralized controllers operate at the edge of the network and, coupled with our software analytics, provide the 'eyes, brain and muscle' to uniquely enable real-time management of the power network. With multiple successful pilots at investor owned utilities and co-ops, Varentec is now poised for production roll-outs of our Edge of Network Grid Optimization solutions.”

The new funding, with the backing of investors like Gates and Vinod Khosla, validates the company's approach and enables it to solve grid challenges such as energy conservation, grid optimization and grid integration of rooftop photovoltaics, Divan added.

“It will also allow us to commercialize our cutting edge technology into transformative power delivery solutions data centers and industrial applications.”

Commenting on the announcement, Khosla said, “Varentec's intelligent power management and data analytics platform is exactly the breakthrough technology that we look for in companies. Development of cost-effective, intelligent, decentralized power grid solutions has been a challenging problem that has been solved effectively by the Varentec team.”