GE Energy Financial Services is joining SynapSense’s investors Emerald Technology Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Robert Bosch Venture Capital, American River Ventures, Nth Power and DFJ Frontier in a combined $5 million investment for the development and market expansion of SynapSense’s Data Center Monitoring, Adaptive Control and Energy Management technology.

Additional financial details of the investment were not disclosed.

SynapSense said a "commercial partnership" with GE is part of a focus on digital energy services, the Smart Grid and GE's ecomagination line of products."

The commercial partnership is with GE Intelligent Platforms, a technology business unit that provides software, hardware, services, and expertise in automation and embedded computing. The partnership will combine SynapSense’s technology with GE Intelligent Platform’s Proficy Software and Control platform. The combined offering will enable data center operators to optimize energy use by continuously aligning cooling capacity with changes in IT load. The technology is said to save up to 35 percent of cooling costs while ensuring security, redundancy and resiliency.

GE has used SynapSense technology in some of its data centers including GE Corporate and NBC Universal since 2008.

“SynapSense is a strong addition to GE’s digital energy, Smart Grid and ecomagination-related investments, offering multiple commercial and development collaboration opportunities in a data center equipment market estimated at $40 billion a year, with annual electricity consumption costing $7 billion,” said Kevin Skillern, head of venture capital investing at GE Energy Financial Services.

According to the US Department of Energy, data centers are among the largest single sources of power demand in the United States, consuming about 3 percent of the nation's energy supply. Facility operators rank energy efficiency as a top concern and it is also a significant goal of other industry players, government and utilities.

SynapSense is based in Folsom, Calif. The company was recently recognized as a Gold Medal winner in the SearchDataCenter.com 2009 Product of the Year Awards and part of the Global Clean Tech 100 by the UK Guardian and Clean Tech groups. Additionally, BusinessWeek and market researcher, YouNoodle, named the company one of the top 50 technology startups readers should follow.

Reprinted with permission from Sustainable Business