Glacier Bay closed an $8-million round of venture capital funding Tuesday, its first in 16 years of business.

NEA was the sole investor in the round, said Glacier Bay CEO Gerald Alston, who added that the money will be used to expand production of the company’s energy technology.

Oakland, California-based Glacier Bay might be best-known for its refrigeration and air conditioning systems for private yachts, but actually made most of its money doing research and development in thermal management, Mr. Alston said.

Glacier Bay developed the cooling system for IBM’s System/390 mainframe computers, for instance, and communications-cooling systems for United Defense and L3 Communications.

About three years ago, the company began to combine the technologies it had developed over the years to create what it calls an “integrated energy platform” for private yachts, as well as military, long-haul trucking, and medical device applications.

It began selling the platform in the past year. Demand has already exceeded Glacier’s production capacity, according to Mr. Alston.

With the infusion of cash, the company is now looking at buildings for a 50,000-square-foot, $100-million-per-year production facility to add to its current 15,000-square-foot plant.

Glacier Bay expects to have its new facility ready in the beginning of 2007. Mr. Alston anticipates he will seek another round of funding, for further expansion, at the end of 2007 or the beginning of 2008.

The Big Idea

The platform’s concept is this: unlike a wall socket, which provides the same voltage regardless of the amount needed by whatever device is plugged in, Glacier Bay generators supply the specific amount required by the devices that are using the power.

“Providing a constant voltage and frequency has worked for a great many years, but it’s not very efficient,” Mr. Alston said. “We looked at trying to optimize voltage and frequency being used and generated, and all of a sudden these tremendous efficiencies can come into play.”

Take the yacht, for example.

Instead of the fairly constant voltage that comes out of wall sockets, diesel generators that produce electricity on yachts—as well as all the motor-based devices that use electricity, such as the motor that propels the boat, the pumps, resistance heaters, and air conditioning compressor—have variable speeds with fluctuating voltages.

That means the devices use different amounts of electricity depending on what they are doing. Glacier Bay’s technology allows the generator and motors to communicate, so the loads—the amount of electricity needed—match the amount being generated.

“If you have a 5-horsepower motor driving an air conditioning compressor, it may only be providing 5 horsepower for 2 percent of its operating time, and for the rest of the time, it’s providing only a fraction of that horsepower,” said Mr. Alston. “That creates a lot of inefficiencies, so if you have a way to remove those inefficiencies, you reduce the energy consumption.”

In other words, instead of the generator always giving the motor the full horsepower, Glacier Bay allows the generator to create only the power that’s needed at any time.

On top of that, the generator and motors are designed more efficiently. All this reduces the size and weight of the components, and reduces electrical use by 20 to 50 percent.

‘Enormous’ Potential

It’s not just the motor, which is 98 to 99 percent efficient, compared with 96 to 97 percent efficiencies for conventional motors, said Mr. Alston, the real advantage lies in the grouping of all the components together, including more efficient generators and motors that are designed to adapt to different loads, and special electronics to allow the devices to communicate.

“Each component might be 10 percent more efficient, but if you connect everything together you get disproportionately higher efficiency,” said Mr. Alston.

Robert Wilder, president of WilderShares, which manages two clean energy indices, said enormous strides are going to be made in energy efficiency in the next few years, if oil prices remain high.

“Energy efficiency is the sleeping giant,” he said. “It may not be as sexy as solar power, wind farms, or the latest tidal power, but it’s a big chunk of where progress can be made.”

The potential is “enormous,” said Mr. Wilder, adding that the WilderHill Clean Energy Index has been searching for years to find companies improving motors.

The fact that Glacier Bay is integrating the systems to include energy management and power conditioning makes them “even more interesting to me as an index producer in this industry,” he said.

“I can’t even imagine all the places that better motors would fit; it’s mind boggling,” said Mr. Wilder. “There’s a saying that necessity is the mother of invention, but actually, invention can also create necessity. A better invention like this is going to come up with all kinds of new applications.”

Contact the writer:JKho@RedHerring.com