OREANDA-NEWS. E.ON has again expanded its venture-capital activities by taking a stake in Bidgely as part of the U.S.-based start-up’s $16.6 million Series B financing round.

Bidgely offers energy companies cloud-based, real-time applications that their residential customers can access via the internet or mobile devices. The applications enable customers to better manage their energy usage and compare it with that of similar households in their area. One of its features is energy-saving tips for home electronics, appliances, and heating units, which are sent as push notification messages to customers’ mobile devices.

“Our partnership with Bidgely supplements our previous co-investments very well. We want to offer our customers individually tailored, innovative products for an increasingly digitalized world. This partnership will enable us to do even more to help them save energy and manage their usage better,” says Susana Quintana-Plaza, E.ON SE’s Senior Vice President for Technology and Innovation.

E.ON continues to promote innovation by making strategic co-investments in start-ups whose intelligent solutions are helping to shape tomorrow’s energy market. To date, E.ON has taken stakes in more than a dozen start-ups in the United States, Europe, and Australia. Its portfolio is diverse. It has invested in companies ranging from Sungevity (which develops innovative software for planning solar arrays) to Enervee who provides a dynamic platform on which consumers can make more energy-efficient choices when it comes to household appliances, devices and electronics purchases. The start-up AutoGrid is dedicated to bring the power of Big Data, predictive analytics and Internet scale computational techniques to the production and consumption of electricity. In Germany E.ON has invested in Thermondo, a Berlin-based start-up whose online platform enables customers to quickly compare a variety of heating units.