The round was led by Obvious Ventures, along with angel investors in the US and Europe. Enervee has previously raised a $1 million angel round of funding in 2014.

'When buying a product that uses energy today, especially large appliances and electronics, which use a large amount of energy, there is currently no easy and transparent way to understand what the operating costs of that purchase are going to be over time in a financial sense, and in environmental impact,' Matthias Kurwig, co-founder and CEO of Enervee.

Enervee provides what it called the 'Enervee Score,' an energy rating score that analyzes hundreds of thousands of product offers for appliances and electronics on a daily basis to give consumers the more accurate and up to date information regarding their purchases.

It takes the data from federal and state government regulators, and bases the number on their calculations. The potential savings can be manipulated, though, in a number of ways. First, by location; by putting in a zip code, Enervee can make calculations based on the likely utility that customer is using.

Users can also change the amount of consumption, so if they use their TV for 2 hours a day, or do a certain number of loads of laundry per week, that will also change the number.

And, finally, Enervee takes the data and looks at the gamut of market, what the best products are, and the worst, and then compares and ranks them.
Searching for products on the platform can be done on both mobile and desktop, and that also has to do with where the consumer is in the buying cycle, Kurwig told me.

In addition to its consumer website, Enervee also acts as a white label marketplace for the utilities as well, helping them raise participation rates by identifying and advertising to customers in their territory who are in the market for appliances or electronics. Enervee will deliver incentives to participants, and follow up to encourage new energy-efficient purchases.

The consumer can use the Enervee marketplace to buy the product, either online or in-store, then mail back the receipt to get their rebate either via PayPal or a prepaid debit card.

'This is additional consumer incentive, but its also benefit for the utility, who is able to verify the purchases and how much the people, and the program, are saving. This is a core value to utilities, and we can show how much do we actually move the needle,' Kurwig said.

'The market is in great change, with people moving to solar and battery type things, and utilities realize the customer will have more choice in how they go about getting energy. We help consumers with being engaged, and utilities use us in an advisory role. It's a win win relationship, and one that is a key element to us getting larger insights, and scaling quicker rather than being small startup.'
The company is currently live with PG&E, Eversource, and United Illuminating. It will be launching with another large utility in California, with over one million households, on July 1st.

Enervee was bootstrapped for first three and a half years, building up its data infrastructure and 'plumbing,' so it can gather big data to analyze the market. Now that it has started partnering with utilities it is getting ready to scale.
The new funding will be used to expand its team, especially in its Santa Monica office. It currently has 14 employees, and plans to more than double, to between 30 and 40, by the end of this year.

It will also be expanding product to new categories, including water heaters, using the same model to calculate water usage.

The company will also use some of the funding to take its first steps in Europe.

'We are going to start trials there but it is a different business model, as utilities don't have state funded incentive programs,' said Kurwig. 'Their whole engagement is more focused on the utility providing service to build a closer relationship on the shopping side, with services and features.'

Enervee is looking to become the standard scoring system for energy consumption, so that every product will automatically come with the information what the impact will ultimately be.

'There is a real opportunity to make a scoring system like ours pretty much an every day indicator when people make purchasing decisions. They can say 'I'm being financially and environmentally responsible.' Look at the changes in the automobile industry. Today everyone buying a car understands what miles per gallon means and its natural when you make a purchase and it's part of the cost of owning a car, as well as an indicator of how responsible they are with resources,' said Kurwig.

'There is no reason is should be limited to electronics and we could have a score like this for transportation, a simple normalized score,' said Kurwig. 'One we are looking into actively is real estate, so when you buy and an apartment or house, you get a score like this, based on the size and total energy consumption, and a function of where it is, including the weather. You will be able to compare real estate on Trulia, see which has a great score, and know your utility bills will be low.'