Hartford-based Enviro Power said it has raised $1.5 million to help bring its environmentally friendly boiler technology to market.
A Pennsylvania-based company called Burnham Holdings, which owns a portfolio of boiler manufacturers and related companies, and Connecticut’s quasi-public venture investment arm, Connecticut Innovations, both provided the capital.
CI had previously invested $250,000 in the seven-employee company, based in the Fuller Brush complex on Main Street in Hartford.
Enviro Power’s SmartWatt Boiler is designed to generate “close-to-zero-cost” electricity and backup power. The company hopes to position the product as a way for building owners to reduce their utility bills, lower their carbon footprint, and make the electric grid more resilient.
“The addition of Burnham Holdings as a strategic investor gives us a unique advantage given that the SmartWatt Boiler, which is essentially a high-efficiency heating system with a power plant inside, is similar to products produced by various Burnham Holdings subsidiaries,” Enviro Power CEO Dan Nadav said in a statement.
“Burnham Holdings’ investment allows us to leverage Burnham’s decades of HVAC manufacturing experience and combine with Enviro Power’s cutting-edge heat and power technology in order to bring to market a truly unique, economical, environmentally friendly, combined heat and power solution for today’s climate-conscious consumers,” Nadav continued.
In connection with the investment, Enviro Power is adding Morgan O’Brien, CEO of Pittsburgh-based People’s Gas, to its board of directors.
In an interview Friday morning, Enviro Power President Michael Cocuzza said Enviro Power will be starting field trials of its SmartWatt product this year and working with Burnham on a production line, with hopes for full commercialization in 2021.
“Burnham sees what we see, which is a cleaner energy climate for heating, which our product is absolutely addressing,” Cocuzza said.
For the next few years, Enviro Power’s recently enlarged space at Fuller Brush, where the company has about 4,000 square feet, should be sufficient, he said, as it can produce up to 500 units a year.
But Enviro Power, which has seven employees, hopes to produce much more than that eventually. It will be looking for larger Connecticut production locations to site its turbine power electronics plant.
