Filtration products company ESCO Technologies said Friday it bought energy software company Nexus Energy Software for $28.5 million in cash, giving it a company that helps utilities manage their energy meters.

Vic Richey, CEO of St. Louis, Missouri-based ESCO, said the company bought Nexus to expand into advanced metering.

Nexus, based in Wellesley, Massachusetts, already has more than 80 energy customers. Its software gives utilities and customers data about energy use and billing. The software also helps utilities plan their networks and forecast the amount of energy that will be needed.

“The information management capability that Nexus brings to the data collected in advanced metering is the key to unlocking its value,” he said.

Founded in 1997, Nexus has annual revenues of more than $10 million.

The acquisition represents the second piece of power management news this week. On Tuesday, Washington, D.C.-based power management company GridPoint announced it raised $9 million in venture capital funding to ramp up production and marketing of its systems (see GridPoint Gets $9M).

Power Management Grows

Both announcements signal that high fossil fuel prices and the need for more reliable power have made power management technology more attractive.

“These are technologies that are going to get a lot more attention in the next couple of years,” said Roberto Torres, a strategic analyst at Frost & Sullivan. “The potential is huge, well into the billions. A lot more investment and funding are going to be channeled toward these, because we’re just not developed enough.”

In the United States, the grid is aging and under-maintained. Many transformers are approaching or surpassing their design life. And in every year since 1975, investment in the electricity transmission grid has dropped about $117 million, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

The result is a brittle grid constantly on the edge of failure. Research firm Primen, now part of EPRI Solutions, estimates the cost of power outages and fluctuations at between $119 billion and $188 billion yearly.

As the grid’s inherent weaknesses come to light, the demand for steady, uninterrupted power grows. “Smart” power management technology is seen as a potential solution because it gives utilities, businesses, and other customers more information about the energy being used and the state of the grid. Currently, most companies still send readers to check meters manually.

Still, companies have had trouble convincing utilities to spend money on new technologies.

“It’s something utilities should have done a long time ago,” said Dan Benjamin, a senior analyst for ABI Research.