Daikin Comfort Technologies North America has acquired Venstar, a prominent controls and energy management systems provider.
Venstar’s technology and indoor comfort solutions are used in millions of residences and light commercial applications across the United States, Canada and Mexico.
The acquisition is worth an estimated $US101 million.
Venstar, founded in 1992 and based in Southern California, designs and builds a broad variety of innovative thermostats with more than 10 million installed.
The company’s Surveyor® Energy Management System allows retailers, restaurant chains and other multi-location businesses to remotely monitor, manage and control energy consumption while reducing maintenance expenses.
Currently, Surveyor is used to control more than 100,000 HVAC systems and building lighting in more than 30,000 retail locations throughout North America. Venstar’s Skyport Cloud service provides businesses a secure and private powerful cloud service for command and control of HVAC systems from anywhere in the world.
Venstar’s headquarters will remain in California and Daikin plans to maintain the strong recognition of the Venstar brand, along with maintaining all of Venstar’s successfully branded products.
Daikin’s vice president of controls, Dennis Thoren, said smart thermostat and cloud service solutions represent the future of indoor comfort beyond controlling temperature and ventilation.
“Monitoring and controlling performance, indoor air quality, predictive maintenance, and optimizing service truck logistics are just a few of the benefits that innovative thermostats and cloud-based services can provide contractors and customers,” he said.
“It’s an effective, easy way to manage energy consumption remotely, even eventually collaborating with electric utilities to improve demand response. These are powerful benefits that provide value to utilities, contractors and customers.”
“For example, Venstar's Surveyor typically saves small-box retailers 20 to 35 perc ent of their controlled energy costs. “This translates to tens of millions of dollars in savings each year and dramatic reductions in CO2 emissions.”
The acquisition is one of several Daikin has completed during the past few years as it works to transform the North American HVAC industry.
The $500 million Daikin Texas Technology Park (DTTP), located just northwest of Houston, now employs more than 7,000 people. At over 4 million square feet, DTTP is one of the largest manufacturing facilities in the world; 74 football fields can fit under its roof.