PowWow over water leads to $3m funding

PowWow Energy, a California-based startup providing a software-as-a-service to monitor water user efficiency, has secured the top spot in a competition geared towards boosting innovation in agriculture and water sectors.

PowWow will receive $2.3m out of a pot of $27m shared with other finalists, awarded by the California Energy Commission. Partnered with University of California Santa Barbara and sister campus Davis, the funding will pay for a large-scale implementation of PowWow’s Irrigation Advisor product over the next two years.

Irrigation Advisor works without additional hardware through monitoring pump data, local data from farming records, and aerial imagery. The trial will aim to demonstrate that the platform can save water, reduce energy consumption, cut greenhouse gases, and be a valuable weapon to combat California’s worsening drought situation.

In addition, PowWow secured a further $700,000 in angel funding to accelerate the growth of its Pump Monitor product, which provides smart water leak detection, bringing its total raised in grant and angel funding to $3m.

Olivier Jerphagnon, PowWow’s CEO, said: “We benefited from the support from several communities in Northern and Southern California who saw a need to act while the VC industry is still trying to understand the water conundrum. We won’t solve the water crisis and create economic opportunities without taking the best of Central Valley and Silicon Valley together.”