As clean energy powers more and more of our world, it’s critical to ensure that its industrial facilities are reliable and efficient. The best way to do that? Prevent maintenance issues before they ever cause equipment downtime.

Enter Varea Energy, a Houston-based Greentown Labs member company. 

“We enable sustainability and prevent costly breakdowns with our analytics,” says Varea Energy Co-founder and CEO Anna Dai. “We can detect faults before they happen, and we’re also able to optimize all electricity assets.” 

Varea Energy does this through machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data science. Its software-as-a-service technology provides industrial operators with easy-to-read charts to help them maintain machinery and optimize electrical use.

In the next six months, Varea Energy plans to raise its seed funding round, develop its technology’s front-end dashboard, and fine-tune its deep learning model. In addition, the five-person startup is currently taking pilots.

“We’re looking to do more pilots in clean energy, high-risk facilities in two different areas: hydrogen and carbon sequestration,” Dai says.

Varea Energy has been part of Greentown since fall 2020, when it became an Inaugural Member of Greentown Houston. Dai says Greentown’s role as a convener of the region’s climatetech ecosystem has helped Varea Energy advance.

“The networking at Greentown Houston has been really beneficial,” Dai says. “The happy hours, the networking events, and the investor meetings have been really helpful for us to meet and speak with people from larger companies, which helps us develop our product and see what direction we want to take it in.”

Dai founded Varea Energy in 2019, after she spent time working in Amsterdam and was inspired by the Netherlands’ impressive climate policies. She is part of Houston’s street dancing and hip hop community, and hopes for her startup to collaborate with the city’s artists somehow in the future.