The Slater Technology Fund today announced that it has reinvested in energy management services company VCharge as part of a round now totaling $1.9 million. The new commitment brings Slater's total investment in VCharge to $250,000, in a round that has expanded to include the Clean Energy Venture Group, Launchpad Venture Group and EOS Ventures. VCharge plans to use the funding to prove operational and technical scalability in several pilots this winter, to grow its team, and to improve its core product.

VCharge's patented cloud-based Transactive Load platform allows electric thermal storage heaters, electric cars, and other devices to participate intelligently in electricity markets. The company plans to demonstrate the power of this technology by retrofitting existing electric thermal storage (ETS) heaters with its patented SmartBricksTM controls. Transactive Load generally and SmartBricks in particular, is a fundamentally new class of load that can participate on-demand in energy and ancillary services markets. Transactive Load is a flexible, reliable, predictable and high-value product that opens the door to clean and much needed variable renewable energy resources.

"As a RI company, it is exciting to receive continued support from Slater" said Jessica Millar, CEO of VCharge. "These two rounds of investment by the fund played a big part in getting us to where we are today. The advice we get from managing director Thorne Sparkman is great, and he is helping launch us towards an ambitious future."

VCharge also recently appointed Gene Zimon, former CIO of Massachusetts utility NSTAR and current president of entrepreneur consulting firm EDGE Advisers, to its board of directors. Zimon's considerable experience and expertise, gained from a long career in energy, includes working with utilities at Oracle and serving as CIO at Boston Gas and will be an asset for VCharge as it moves further into the market.

"The members of the VCharge team are true thought leaders," said Thorne Sparkman, managing director of the Slater Technology Fund. "By adding a network-based layer of real-time intelligence on top of energy assets that have often been in place for decades, VCharge is fundamentally changing when and how electricity is bought and sold. Slater is pleased to reinvest, this time alongside a larger group of investors with expertise in the clean energy sector, to help the company ride its innovative technology to a market-leading position."

About Slater Technology Fund
The Slater Technology Fund is a state-backed venture capital fund that invests in new ventures committed to basing and building their businesses in Rhode Island. Slater focuses its resources on the support of entrepreneurs who have the vision, leadership and commitment to build substantial commercial enterprises. Slater typically invests at the inception stage in the development of a new venture, often based upon ideas and technologies originating in academic institutions and/or government research laboratories located within the region. In most cases, investments are premised upon the possibility of raising substantial follow-on financing, from venture capital investors or from strategic partners, with a view toward accelerating the generation of significant numbers of high-value, high-wage jobs over the intermediate to longer-term.