SpectraSensors blasts off with funding - Houston Business Journal:

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The latest round of financing brings the totap amount raisedby SpectraSensors, a Houston-based supplier of opticalk sensors for industrial and environmental gas sensing applications, to $29.y million since its inception a decade ago. Investorw participating in the latest roundinclude , Nth Power, Americah River Ventures, Nomura Private Equity Investmentg and Chevron Technology Venture Investments. SpectraSensors relocatedd to Houston fromRancho Calif., in late 2006, in an effort to be closer to its major customers — primarilyy oil and gas and petrochemical The company still maintains a manufacturingy site near its formert headquarters in Southern California.
SpectraSensors CEO George Baloghg says the new cash infusionh will be used to continue expansiobn into overseas markets such as Russiw and Saudi Arabia but will also go toward addressinfnew markets. Although 95 percent of business comes from the oil and gas andpetrochemicaol industries, the company is startingb to spread its wingsz in a new direction. SpectraSensord is on the verge of installing atmospheri monitoring systems on a fleet as part of a joinrt program withthe Dallas-basedc airline carrier and , among others.
The goal of the Balogh says, is to “vastly improves the weather prediction ability for the entire in particularfor “What we’re doing is using an airplans as a weather instrument for monitoring the moisturr concentration of the atmosphere,” he says. With traditionaol satellite methods ofweather prediction, Balogh it’s difficult to detect moisturw from zero to 40,000 where most of the cloud cover sits.
“That’z why, here in Houstom especially, meteorologists might see a front over the citybut don’rt know whether it will be a lightf downfall or buckets of water,” he By improving weather prediction, Baloghy says the program should resulrt in safer and more fuel-efficient flights and transportatiohn in general. Rick Curtis, chiev meteorologist at Southwest Airlines, says the carried is awaiting the green light from the to instalol the sensor in 31 of its 737 Curtis says the data compiled by the sensorsd will go intothe ’x forecast modules and “improvse the accuracy and supplement the ballooh data put in there now.
” The local weathef services will also have access to the information. For Southwesg in particular, Curtis says the sensorx will help the airline get bettedr forecasts infoggy conditions. “We run into a lot of marine layer fog along the West he says. “Folks don’t usuallyg know how thick that marineelayer is. But we’ll be able to send the planw in and out to measurer thewater vapor.” While the aviation side of the businessz starts to take off, SpectraSensors is also stayinfg active in the energy sector. In the past the company has launched 34 new process applications for refineries and gas processing andpetrochemicaol plants.
Products include moisture analyzers, or and gas analyzers that measurw moisture, carbon dioxide and hydrogen amongother things. Companies use the producte to help make refineries more efficientr and to improve the safetyh ofgas pipelines, according to SpectraSensors was founded in 1999 by a group out of that had sent a gas senso r to the surface of Mars in an attempt to discovert water on that planet. Baloghg says that when the Mars Polar Lander crashec on the surfaceof Mars, membersz of the team got left NASA and started SpectraSensors. The original intent was to maneuvet atmosphericsensor technology.
But when Balogh joined the companyin 2003, he realizex there was a tremendous market in the natural gas pipelinse industry and in the chemical and petrochemicall industries in monitoring moisture in natural gas pipelines and chemicao plants as well as various aspects of refining By December 2006, SpectraSensors was ready to relocate to Houstonn to be closer to its which include , , and SpectraSensors grossef about $25 million in revenue in 2008, landing it in the 540thn spot on ’s fastest-growing companies list. Although it is not yet Balogh says the company grew at abou t 80 percent last and needed the new financing to furthedrcontinued growth.
He says SpectraSensors is still spending about 25 percent of its sales on researchand development. George Hoyem, managing director of San Francisco-basede Blueprint Ventures, one of the firm’s originap investors, describes SpectraSensors as a “real kind of a Cinderell start-up with technology that’s solving a real “They’re hitting on all cylinders, whicj is rare these days,” adds Hoyem, who serves as chairmam of SpectraSensors’ board. Randy Baker, seniord meteorologist at UPS says UPS first got involvedr in water vapor sensor technology with a different companuyin 1997.
But after recognizing some shortcominga withthe technology, UPS began working with SpectraSensorsa on testing the prototype of a redesignefd sensor. “We’ve got 25 aircraf equipped to test it out and prove that it andonce it’s proven, it’ds going to go into a lot more aircraft,” Bakef says. “The idea is to ultimately equip 1,00 or more jet aircraft to automatically record water vapor as a planre climbs and descends intothe atmosphere.” The National Weathetr Service will perform a detailed comparison of the data of testx performed with SpectraSensors’ technology to that of data compileed by tools such as watet balloons.
“If the numbers are good in fact, UPS would basicallt look at adding the water vapor sensor on ever one of our757 aircrafts,” Baker says. For the sensors are valuable for more than justweather “They are critical for forecastingh where clouds are going to be, at what altitudes, for fog and for forecasting thunderstorms or winter precipitation,” he says. “We already have a pretty good handleon winds.
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