Intel invests secret squirrel amount in smart grids

Do you want to know how much Intel’s investment arm, Intel Capital, invested in smart grid company Grid Net? Do you? Huh? Huh?

Well, Greenbang’s not going to tell you. So there.

Not because she doesn’t want to mind – Greenbang’s not like that – but because she can’t. Intel Capital has been boasting about its latest round of eight investments but has declined to actually say how much it’s spending on each project.

It would say, though, that it’s spend $60 million on the eight, so Greenbang can safely say that Grid Net has received somewhere between one cent and $60 million from the chipmaker’s coffers.

Intel describes the US-based smart grid company like this:

Grid Net is an energy efficiency and smart grid infrastructure software company that uses WiMax and an open network management framework to enable the delivery of secure, scalable and high-performing Smart Grid services. Grid Net’s solutions enable consumers to manage and optimize their electrical energy consumption and likewise enable utilities to better manage, optimize and securely control energy.

Or, to put it another way, Grid Net sells the infrastructure that utilities can use to get their customers to monitor and cut their energy use.