TDK Ventures invests in Span: maker of smart home electrical panels
TDK Corporation (TSE: 6762) announced today that subsidiary TDK Ventures invested in Span, developer of innovative smart electrical panels that aim to give homeowners the ability to monitor and manage their home energy consumption in real time using a mobile app. The Span Smart Panel is especially advantageous when paired with clean energy upgrades in the home like solar panels, home batteries, and EV charging.
- Span develops high-end electrical panels that serve as centralized energy management systems for residential homes
- Span provides heightened energy control and automation for homeowners, and serves as an important element of resiliency solutions for homes facing natural disasters, blackouts, or other electric power disruptions
- TDK Corporation will leverage its extensive expertise in materials science, passive components, batteries, power supplies, sensors, and large scale manufacturing to accelerate Span’s success
The Span Smart Panel is designed and engineered to extend above and beyond basic circuit protection that has traditionally been the role of home electrical panels. Homes today need a modernized panel to better manage innovative features available in today’s connected electronics, advanced appliances, innovative home device accessories, and clean energy systems in the home.
“At Span we are re-architecting the home electrical panel to be the central hub for monitoring and managing all energy resources and loads in the home. The Span panel is engineered to give homeowners very high levels of insight and control into all aspects of their home energy usage,” said Arch Rao, CEO and Founder of Span. “TDK is a key partner for us in delivering state-of-the-art products and groundbreaking services to customers. We are glad to have TDK Ventures onboard, journeying with us step-by-step and adding value along the way.”
Homeowners can control their Span systems with an intuitive mobile app to monitor and manage home energy from anywhere in the world. It also recently integrated with Amazon Alexa to enable voice-activated controls to monitor and manage energy usage. Span provides powerful features to help homeowners gain insights into their home energy use and potential for savings, including the potential to identify faulty appliances that consume excessive energy. Lowering home energy consumption through controls and insights like these decreases greenhouse gas emissions, lowers carbon footprint, and contributes to a more sustainable world.
“Span is delivering an incredibly powerful system that directly impacts home energy usage in a significant way. Lowering overall energy consumption and lowering overall greenhouse gas emissions are major areas where TDK wants to make a huge positive impact,” said Nicolas Sauvage, Managing Director at TDK Ventures. “TDK is thrilled to partner with Span to help deliver innovative technologies that significantly promote safety and sustainability.”
The Span Smart Panel, paired with solar and battery storage, can provide a high level of self-sufficiency to homeowners in the case of a natural disaster, blackout, or other electric power disruption from the grid and utility companies. Span is part of a solution that can help homeowners maintain power to critical parts of their homes and potentially avoid the series of blackouts and power transmission problems that recently affected Texas and caused many people to lose power to their homes for days.
Both near- and long-term, Span’s technology can enable integration of smart home appliances, heating/cooling systems, fire alarms, or cooking appliances. The Span solution will provide higher levels of granularity for energy control and automation to homeowners.
TDK invests globally in early-stage startups that leverage fundamental materials science innovations to unlock an attractive and sustainable future for the world. TDK Ventures’ goal is to help every startup we invest in achieve their full potential for positive world impact. Signaling a return on investment in materials science startups in 2020, three companies TDK Ventures invested in have gone public or been acquired.
www.tdk.com
