Green Tech

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--U.S. energy objectives are closely intertwined with--and in many cases, rely upon--the country's broadband infrastructure, government officials and smart-grid company executives say.

The Federal Communications Commission on Monday held a "field hearing" at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the role of communications in energy and environment. It was an information-gathering session designed to help set a national broadband strategy.

Energy displays bring the smart grid home (photos)

The entire notion of the smart grid supposes connectivity at different points along the grid. Adding digital technologies to the existing system will allow energy to be used more efficiently, increase reliability, and let grid operators use more solar and wind power, say smart-grid advocates.

During the hearing, speakers argued that broader broadband coverage lays the foundation for those benefits by enabling smart-grid applications, such as home energy monitoring, alerting utilities to outages, and charging plug-in vehicles economically and without stressing the grid.

U.S. Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who has been involved in both telecom deregulation and energy legislation, said here Monday that future economic growth is tied closely to the intersection of energy and broadband.

U.S. Rep Ed Markey speaks during the FCC's hearing on broadband with FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski seated.

(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)

"The smart grid is an electricity Internet. Without the broadband revolution, you cannot have the revolution we're talking about," Markey said. "If you look at the energy sector and the broadband sector, you can determine the economic growth of that country."

In the case of consumers, smart-grid companies are already relying heavily on home broadband connections. Smart meters are equipped with networking gear so that data can regularly be sent back and forth between customers and utilities. Millions of smart meters will be installed in the next three years. But there will still be millions of homes without smart meters, and many utilities have limited meter communications for security reasons.

As a result, energy monitoring companies are designing products so that they can function with an Internet connection instead. Rather than have a smart meter provide real-time energy use to an energy display, for example, data can be collected using different workarounds, including Internet gateways that give consumers access to a Web portal.

Wider broadband coverage would open up energy-efficiency services delivered through home energy displays to a bigger set of people, said Adrian Tuck, CEO of Tendril, a company focused on smart energy monitoring.

"It's cheaper to give low-income families access to a broadband than it is to give them smart meters," he said. "We use the existing broadband to compensate for the fact that smart meters are not in place."

Regulatory 'hairball'
Better broadband coverage opens up the market to more businesses, too, said Rick Counihan, president of regulatory affairs at energy-efficiency company EnerNoc.

EnerNoc ratchets down electricity use in office and industrial buildings during peak times by connecting to its customers' meters. That communication with many smaller companies is done with a cellular modem, rather than an Internet connection, which makes the service more expensive, he said.

For utilities, connectivity is integral to improving the reliability of the grid, according to executives from utility companies who said that more radio spectrum would help ensure reliable communications to detect outages.

The other area that needs work on the government level is standards and interoperability. The National Institute of Standards and Technology is now leading an effort to establish the necessary standards for smart-grid, covering everything from cybersecurity to in-home communication protocols. But there would need to be coordination among various government agencies for new grid products to be plug and play.

Regulations need to be put in place to promote efficiency at utilities and to reflect peak-time and off-peak pricing of electricity, panelists said.

"The technology is there. The markets are there. The entrepreneurial drive is there," said venture investor Chuck McDermott of Rockport Capital. "The hairball occurs at the regulatory side. We don't have a system that accommodates a dynamic market."

If you need more evidence that energy storage is much more than lithium ion batteries, take a look at the latest smart-grid utility storage projects.

The Department of Energy on Tuesday announced that $620 million in stimulus funding is going to 32 smart-grid programs, which will be coupled with another $1 billion in private money. A total of $770 million from government and industry sources in the next few years will go to energy storage, giving a number of storage technologies a dose of real-world experience. (See this PDF for details.)

(Credit: PG&E)

Notable in the list is the prominence of compressed-air energy storage and flow batteries, two technologies rarely discussed just a few years ago. Also in the mix are flywheels and using batteries for distributed energy storage in communities.

It's unlikely that all the DOE-aided projects will immediately prove to be commercially viable. But storage has clearly emerged as a key component in the vision of the smart grid. A number of start-ups are developing technologies they hope can address a specific storage application or undercut pumped hydro, considered the cheapest form of utility storage, on price. With pumped hydro, water is pumped uphill and released at peak times to run a generator. But its use is limited by geography.

Many of the 16 Energy Department power storage grants were focused on storing wind power, which is a variable source of energy. In California, for example, utility Pacific Gas & Electric plans to store the power generated by wind turbines at night, when turbines are most productive in underground caverns. During the day, when grid demand is higher, the air is released and passed through a turbine to make electricity.

The advantage of underground compressed air storage is that it can be cheaper than batteries and can store many hours worth of energy. PG&E forecasts that its Kern County, Calif., project can deliver 300 megawatts of power for 10 hours, enough to supply tens of thousands of homes.

Another novel technique is using metal tanks to store compressed air, a technology being developed by a Dartmouth College spin-off SustainX. The compressed air is released to run a hydraulic motor that drives a generator to make electricity.

Flow batteries, meanwhile, use tanks of liquid electrolyte solutions. When the two liquids interact, there is a chemical reaction that creates a flow of electricity.

An advantage of this approach is that store large amounts of energy and discharge relatively quickly, according to the Electricity Storage Association. One project will use technology from Premium Power, which makes tractor trailer-size zinc flow batteries to maintain a steady frequency on the grid and supply power during times of peak demand.

Different strokes
The variety of technologies points to the range of energy storage applications. Flywheels from award winner Beacon Power, for example, can absorb and discharge megawatts' worth of power to the grid but only in 15-minute bursts. Still, flywheels are getting more attention because they are a nonpolluting replacement to the natural-gas plants now used to smooth out short-term fluctuations in grid frequency, according to the company.

Click on the image for a slide show of different energy storage technologies.

(Credit: AEP)

Large batteries, too, will be further tested for grid storage. Duke Energy plans to use multiple battery types for 20 megawatts' worth of power delivery at the Notrees Windpower project in Texas. The "hybrid" battery system is being designed for two tasks: to smooth out short-term grid fluctuations and to supply hours' worth of power during the day, according to a Duke Energy representative.

Utility Portland General Electric in the next two years plans to install five batteries from auto battery supplier Ener1 to supply enough juice to power 400 homes for about an hour. Alternative chemistries, including lead carbon batteries from East Penn Manufacturing, will also be used.

One project will test the viability of used car batteries for grid storage. Lithium ion plug-in car batteries from A123 Systems will be used to supply 25 kilowatts for two hours in 20 community energy storage projects. The performance of lithium ion batteries degrades after many years in a car, but there is still sufficient storage and power for grid applications, utility executives say.

The Department of Energy on Tuesday awarded $620 million in smart grid projects, the second major wave of government-led funding to modernize the electricity grid.

The money will come from the stimulus package and be matched by commercial companies, making the total spending $1.6 billion spread across 32 demonstration projects in 21 states. A total of $8.1 billion in smart-grid spending from public and private sources was announced late last month.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced the awards at Ohio-based utility AEP, whose GridSmart program is considered one of the more technically advanced.

The bulk of the DOE awards--$435 million--will be aimed at adding communications to the transmission and distribution grid through the installation of two-way meters, sensors on the transmission lines, and in-home energy displays.

This is a large megawatt storage device already on AEP's grid. Click on the image to see a photo gallery of power grid storage technologies.

(Credit: AEP)

By networking devices along the grid and adding digital controls, utilities can more easily locate and fix outages and use their energy supply more efficiently. For consumers, in-home displays will allow them to get a real-time readout of their electricity usage to help ways to cut down consumption. Some utilities also offer programs where consumers can get cheaper rates to shave power use during peak times.

The rest of the DOE funding will go toward testing a range of energy storage technologies, including flow batteries, flywheels, and compressed air storage. With storage, utilities can more easily use solar and wind power by better managing the flow of energy on the grid.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--The first crack at vital smart-grid technical standards are due next year and some companies are already gumming up the works by pushing their own networking technology, according to the government official shepherding the process.

The need to hammer out interoperability standards is urgent and the task is extremely complex, said George Arnold, the national coordinator for smart-grid interoperability at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) who gave a presentation at a seminar organized by the IEEE here on Saturday. There will eventually be hundreds of standards covering many areas, from cybersecurity to how meters talk to plug-in cars.

"We've never tried to anything of this magnitude before," Arnold said. "It's more complicated than the Internet and Internet standards have been evolving for over 20 years."

By contrast, smart-grid standards need to be agreed on quickly, with the next phase of a multiyear process due next to begin year. Technical interoperability through standards is supposed to safeguard various players, including consumers and utilities, against technical obsolescence and wasted investment. About $8.1 billion of federal, state, and industry money will be spent on upgrading the electricity grid in the next three years.

The smart grid touches a number of different devices in a home and on the electricity grid. There's a push to establish the technical blueprints and standards certification by late next year.

(Credit: Electric Power Research Institute)

In the case of smart appliances, Arnold said he is ruffling feathers by pushing networking companies to sort out a dizzying number of options.

With two-way meters installed in people's homes, a meter can send a message that higher electricity prices have gone into effect. For example, during a hot summer day when the air conditioning load on the grid is high, utilities may look to "shed load" and have some of its customers volunteer to lower their consumption.

An appliance, such as a dishwasher or clothes dryer, equipped with a chip should be able to receive the message from the meter and go into energy-saving mode. A "smart" appliance could receive the message and perhaps do a job in an hour instead of half an hour to use less power. That handshake between the appliance and meter needs to be standardized to make sure that consumers can buy products from different suppliers.

The problem is that there are multiple methods for passing energy-related information around the home and the companies involved are pushing their own technology, creating a "mess," said Arnold. There are wireless protocols Zigbee and Wi-Fi and at least six powerline communication protocols that use a home's wiring to move data.

"We're trying to accelerate the normal process and gravitate to a few market solutions, which normally takes years," he said after his talk. "Proponents of various communications standards all have a role but at the end of the day, there has to be some assurances for consumers."

Whirlpool last month announced that it would make 1 million "smart energy" clothes dryers by the end of 2011. That commitment, however, was contingent on standards being cooked by the end of 2010 and changes to regulations to reward consumers, appliances makers, and utilities to shave peak-time electricity use.

General Electric's appliance division, too, is making a complete line of demand response appliances.

But appliance manufacturers will be reluctant to support multiple protocols in their networking chips because that could raise the price of these grid-aware white goods.

Internet as a model
The situation with home-area networking is just one instance playing out among the dozens of technology providers, utilities, regulators, and standards bodies. Conflict over standards is common in the tech industry because betting on a failed standard can be costly. But the situation is more complex in the smart grid given the number of groups with a stake in the process.

NIST was given authority over smart-grid standards in 2007 and in September released a framework and roadmap for interoperability. (Click for PDF.) Arnold said that there has been strong industry support for the effort. But given that a number of smart-grid trials are already under way, NIST is focusing on accelerating the process, which will result in a testing and certification next year.

In some ways, NIST is looking at the Internet standards as a model for how the process should be operated. Last week, there was an event called Grid-Interop where a governing panel was created specifically to focus on interoperability.

"Over time this organization (called the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel) is going to become something like the Internet architecture board," said Arnold. "It's not being set up to develop standards. It's really being set up to develop the overall architecture and select which standards should be used."

Internet pioneer Vint Cerf is on the governing board of the panel, he added.

Home energy displays show you the juice (photos)

In its framework document, NIST identified eight priority areas where there is a lack of standards, which includes networking communications, security, and plug-in vehicles. But it is relying heavily on existing standards, including international standards, wherever it can to expedite the process, Arnold said.

That means coordinating among several standards organizations because the smart grid touches so many pieces of hardware and software. For example, to standardize plug-in electric vehicles requires coordination among upwards of 10 different organizations to cover national electric safety codes and standards for car batteries, networking, energy storage, and smart meters.

One of the principles that NIST is pursuing is that standards-based products should be backward-compatible since standards will continue to evolve for many years, Arnold said. He added that communications protocols over time should be based on the Internet Protocol.

Dozens of home energy monitors are coming to market, but nobody knows whether only hybrid Prius owners will use them.

Whole home energy monitors, or displays, are designed to help consumers conserve energy by providing far more detailed information than a monthly bill. These types of devices are already available, but millions more are poised to enter U.S. homes in the next two years, largely through utility-run smart grid programs.

Home energy displays show you the juice (photos)

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The gadgets themselves vary, but the common thread among them is the ability to capture a stream of energy information from a meter at a given moment. Simply by surfacing real-time data, either with a small device or Web software, it's believed the system will prompt people to change their habits and ratchet down consumption by 5 percent to 15 percent, according to studies (PDF).

But even as more sophisticated and user-friendly products come to market, it's unclear whether consumers will track energy use regularly, particularly once the novelty wears off.

"Not everybody is an energy nerd yet," said David Schatsky, principal at consulting company GreenResearch. "While people who study this area are aware of the energy space, the average consumer is not."

Schatsky recently completed a study on home energy displays and concluded that they won't likely be a hot holiday season gift anytime soon. In the next two to three years, he projects there will be millions of these devices installed, with the numbers ramping up to tens of millions after that. Existing displays cost roughly $100 to $200 but Schatsky expects that many consumers will initially receive them for free from utilities as part of smart-grid programs.

In a survey, he found that about half of consumers said they were interested in tools to lower home energy bills. But in reality, the percentage of people who will actively manage their energy is probably much less. There are also technical hurdles to making these devices provide real-time information and useful recommendations.

As a result, he expects that energy-efficiency programs run by utilities in the next few years will drive adoption and provide some lessons on what resonates with consumers and not. As part of the multibillion dollar smart-grid grant program announced last month, about one million consumers will get in-home displays from utilities looking to lower consumers' energy consumption in smart-grid programs. Those programs are expected to get off the ground in the next few months.

Motivating consumers
The drive behind smart-grid technologies is to enable the grid to use electricity more efficiently, integrate more solar and wind power, and potentially eliminate the need to build new power plants to meet growing demand.

Countries around the world are investing to upgrade their grids, but there's a gnawing concern in the U.S. that consumers aren't sold on the benefits. Home energy displays are supposed to be one of the ways that utilities can help consumers save money and lighten their environment footprint.

At their most simple, a whole-house energy monitor shows what's happening on an electricity meter and translates that into cost and kilowatt-hours. For example, seeing that a home's current electricity use is higher than typical could lead a person to unplug a video game console or turn off lights. More sophisticated devices can provide information on how much individual appliances use and generate statistics.

When used as part of smart meter rollout, these devices can be a gateway for energy-efficiency services offered by a utility, such as demand response. For instance, a monitor can employ a color system where red indicates that the electricity rate has gone up because it's a time of peak demand.

The Web is a natural extension to these energy gadgets. Google's PowerMeter is being offered through utilities that install smart meters, which feed real-time energy use to the Web-based monitoring application. But Google is starting to offer PowerMeter through other devices, including a small monitor called the TED 5000.

The information and displays are meant to not only inform consumers but to motivate them to be more efficient. In order for that to work, the devices need to be simple to install and useful just at a glance, say monitor makers.

"There's all this talk about the smart grid, but if customers don't participate, it will be a bust," said Paul Nagel, the vice president of strategic development at home automation start-up Control4. "If they don't engage, then they'll never get energy savings."

Home area networks
One of the challenges that all energy display companies face is the technical barriers to getting them installed. The most sophisticated system would use a home-area network built around a smart meter and a network of Zigbee-enabled appliances and thermostat. But even with big investments in the smart grid, millions of homes still won't have smart meters.

Energy management companies are developing alternatives for getting data regularly from the meter to a display. Bridge devices can read meter information using the automatic meter reading (AMR) protocol, which is already available in millions of meters. Another approach is to clamp sensors onto a circuit box to get data or to install "smart plugs," which transmit data from appliances.

Even if a consumer is willing to navigate these technical issues, there is the question of whether the device will provide energy savings over time.

New home energy management companies are focusing on doing more than just monitor data because they are worried about what's called "mean time to kitchen drawer." That is, a person may have a small display on a kitchen counter as a reminder about energy use. But when the batteries run out, will they simply stash it in a kitchen drawer and forget about it?

Companies are now building in data analytics to provide recommendations or to automatically control appliances to ratchet down energy use. EcoFactor, for example, is developing a hosted software application that can analyze data from wireless thermostats and make changes to make the home more efficient.

Control4, a company which does touch-screen displays to manage video and music in a home, is now branching into energy management. Its EMS 100 device, which runs Linux on an Arm 9 processor, is powerful enough to analyze daily information to provide recommendations on how consumers can make changes to save energy, said Nagel. The company plans to offer it through utilities starting in the first quarter of next year.

Energy management services could be bundled with other home-automation products or even cable and telecom services. iControl and AlertMe in the U.K. plan to bundle security services with tools to manage heating, cooling, and lighting.

One way that utilities and energy management companies expect to motivate consumers is by comparing one home's usage to neighbors in comparably sized homes. Start-up Grounded Power is using social science techniques already proven with recycling and seat belt programs to encourage consumers to save energy, said Mike Bukhin, the vice president of engineering.

"Our users are taking snapshots of data subsets and comparing their data to others' in the community. 'How does my fridge compare to yours?' They also have the ability to ask resident experts questions about their data. The data in turn is shared with the rest of the community," he said.

Home energy displays show you the juice (photos)

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore discusses his hopes and fears for the future of the smart grid.

(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

SAN MATEO, Calif.--Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore hopes that America's next-generation power grid will be a lot like the Internet. Or at least that's the plan.

How close we get to that goal depends on what happens in the next five years, Gore said in a speech here on Thursday evening at blog VentureBeat's GreenBeat conference, where he outlined many of the challenges the United States faces in upgrading its power grid. Along the way, he made comparisons to how the advent of the so-called smart grid will enable the kind of solutions and business innovation that the Internet brought during the 1990s.

"The analogy to the Internet is quite an exact one. Not completely exact, but it's very relevant for lots of reasons. We are moving inexorably toward a widely distributed energy generation and storage model. We are still locked into the old centralized energy generation model," Gore said. "The rapid development of new generations of new smart storage systems are going to make a tremendous difference in connection with the smart grids." Those systems are designed to enable easier storage of unused electricity for peak times, when supplying it to large groups of customers can be difficult and more expensive.

Gore also foresees an entirely new set of devices and instruments to help utilities and consumers control and monitor usage--technology and business models that may not yet have been imagined. "(It's) much the same way the Internet made it possible to see this generation of Internet-ready devices that did not even exist before the Internet began to build out," Gore said.

Correction at 2:33 a.m. PDT November 12: This story incorrectly stated the name of the wireless communications technology used by AlertMe. The system uses ZigBee.

The Wi-Fi Alliance has formed a task group to determine what standards need to be modified to ensure Wi-Fi is the tool of choice for smart-grid applications.

The nonprofit industry association that approves devices for the Wi-Fi Certified seal released a report Wednesday called "Wi-Fi for the Smart Grid: Mature, Interoperable, Security-Protected Technology for Advanced Utility Management Communications." The report expounds on all the possibilities for Wi-Fi as a communication tool for smart appliances, home area networks, neighborhood networks, and wide area networks integrating with smart grids. It also details how the standards being set by the U.S. Department of Energy for smart grids might affect Internet Protocol standards for Wi-Fi.

Wi-Fi seems like an obvious choice for electronics and appliances communicating with a wireless, smart grid-integrated system. The low-power, short-range data transmission method is already the dominant standard for digital communications among computers and electronics in wireless home and neighborhood networks.

Both GE and Whirlpool have said they are close to bringing smart appliances to the consumer market. But Whirlpool has said it's still waiting for an "open, global standard for transmitting signals to, and receiving signals from, a home appliance."

Google PowerMeter has already partnered with AlertMe in the U.K. on a do-it-yourself smart-appliance integration system for homes that bypasses the need for a smart meter and it relies on ZigBee not Wi-Fi. AlertMe relays information between a wireless hub that plugs into a home's broadband connection, smart plugs used by appliances throughout the house, and an electric meter monitor. It allows users to observe and regulate electricity use of their home appliances from anywhere in the world via Google's Web-accessible PowerMeter platform.

"Wi-Fi networks can be deployed to meet the Smart Grid requirements for robustness, manageability, performance, and security," according to the report.

But from the contents of the report, the Wi-Fi cognoscente also seem to realize that Wi-Fi device manufacturers will need to step it up if they want to provide the standard for smart-grid-related communications.

Dropped or insecure connections between a laptop and wireless network is one thing. But once Wi-Fi communications can affect appliances and electricity use, device irregularities or shortfalls in cybersecurity won't be tolerated by the U.S. government or consumers.

What if you could better control home appliance energy use by making your wall socket more clever?

That's the idea behind TalkingPlug from Toronto-based Zerofootprint, a company that makes software for measuring and monitoring corporate carbon emissions.

TalkingPlug is a plug that fits on top of existing electrical outlets. But it's equipped with componentry to make it a controllable node on a network, including an RFID chip, microprocessor, and wireless networking. The company plans to introduce the product next week.

Zerofooprint's wireless plug, coupled with hosted software, is designed to let people view energy use and program appliances.

(Credit: Zerofootprint)

The "smart plugs" will be able to give detailed information on how much electricity individual appliances are using. Because it's programmable, people can also control appliances. For example, a person could have a TV set-top box turn off at midnight and turn on again at 7 in the morning.

A set of plugs create a mesh network and can send information via a home or office building router to Zerofootprint. The company's software processes and analyzes the data, showing people how the energy use compares to others.

"It will completely transform our world when plugs talk to each other and interact with each other," said Ron Dembo, the CEO of Zerofootprint.

For residential customers, it makes most sense to use plugs for areas that draw a lot of power, such entertainment centers and home computers, Dembo said. He estimated the cost is about $50 now but he expects that price would drop significantly if made at larger scale.

The company has built early versions of the product and is seeking companies willing to test it out, such as utilities or appliance makers looking for a way to get information on products.

There are many companies developing energy-management software and devices aimed at helping people reduce wasted electricity use. One of the main technical challenges is getting information from appliances.

For example, IBM and utility Consert are running a trial smart-grid program where large appliances, such as HVAC systems and hot water heaters, are equipped with controllers that can feed data to a meter with two-way communications. Data is collected using a home's Internet connection, and the consumer can view energy data and control appliances from a Web page.

Google's energy-monitoring application PowerMeter can get detailed data using either a smart meter or a home energy display, typically installed by an electrician. Zerofootprint's Dembo said that the TalkingPlug approach, where monitoring and control is placed at the point of use, can be cheaper than existing methods once products are made at large scale.

Start-up EcoFactor is looking at home energy management as a big math problem.

The Silicon Valley-based company on Tuesday is formally launching and is announcing that the largest utilty in Texas, Oncor, has signed on with EcoFactor's residential energy-management service for three years.

There are several companies developing Web-based software or displays to show consumers, in more detail than a monthly bill, how much energy they are using.

A conduit for gathering data.

(Credit: Carrier )

EcoFactor's software, by contrast, works behind the scenes by gathering data from a two-way thermostat and then analyzing the information to optimize heating and cooling systems, which often account for about half of home electricity use.

Collecting thousands of pieces of information a day helps create a picture of a home's "thermal characteristics" and make heating and cooling systems run 20 percent to 30 percent more efficiently, said Scott Hublou, the company's senior vice president of products and co-founder. Even homeowners who have programmed thermostats can benefit because the analysis is customized for a single home, he said.

"People want to do the right thing but they don't necessarily have all the answers, which depends a lot on the thermal characteristics of the house and the mechances of the HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) systems. Sometimes it's the best guess," Hublou said.

EcoFactor combines thermostat settings and information on weather forecasts to run HVAC systems more efficiently. For example, in a trial it found that in two nearly identical homes it was more efficient to turn on the air conditioner one hour before residents came home, rather than to run it at a slightly higher temperature all day long. People can also override settings, which is another piece of data the software uses.

To use the service, consumers need to have a two-way thermostat that can send data over a home broadband connection to EcoFactor's hosted application, which is written on the open-source LAMP stack.

EcoFactor plans to offer the service through business partners, including utilities. There are also a number of service providers, notably telecom operators and cable companies, that are looking to offer home energy-management services to existing customers.

In the deal with Oncor, the software will be used as part of demand-response program in Texas in which customers get a discount to cut electricity use during peak times, typically the middle of a hot day when the air conditioning load on the system is high.

Rather than adjust thermostats higher during peak times, the EcoFactor software will be able to "pre-cool" homes in anticipation of the demand-response event, which should make it more comfortable for people participating in the progam, Hublou explained. Altogether, the software will be used to cut three megawatts of peak power, the equivalent of about 2,000 average-size air conditioner units.

EcoFactor, which was founded three years ago, is funded by angel investors. The company is now in the process of trying to raise a series A round of venture capital.