For Hydropoint Chairman, Conserving Water Is Big Business"Massive geek" Chris Spain finds a growing market for cutting irrigation waste |
April 20, 2009 Environmental Defense Fund, Innovation Exchange Chris Spain never expected to be in the water business. He is an entrepreneur who worked in software, new media and television production after studying religion and philosophy in college. "I've always been a massive geek," says Spain. "I've been addicted to big and little ideas all of my life." After a software company that he helped to start benefited from the Y2K threat, he sat down with some business partners to try to figure out what might be the next big thing. "We looked at collaboration, social networks, energy," he says. "And water just jumped out at us." What especially struck him was how tied water is to energy. Enormous amounts of energy are needed to transport water. So using water more intelligently is a key way to save energy, he says, because less water needs to be moved around. The other big issue that he learned about was runoff, which is largely caused by excessive irrigation, in both agriculture and landscaping. "The more we researched, the more we saw some profound pressures being placed on water availability," Spain says. Hydropoint seeks to address the issue by improving upon existing landscape irrigation systems that, according to Spain, "do a lousy job of comprehending how much water to apply and when." The company downloads weather data from about 40,000 weather stations across the U.S., asks customers to fill out a detailed questionnaire about their soil, plantings, sun and shade conditions, then calculates how much water is needed and when. Once Hydropoint has gathered data, it installs controllers on the customer irrigation systems and transmits instructions wirelessly to the systems. Investors in Hydropoint include Toro, which makes commercial landscaping and irrigation equipment (and distributes Hydropoint's WeatherTRAK system), and Rockport Capital, a Boston-based venture capital firm that specializes in clean technology. The 16,500 subscribers to Hydropoint's data feed saved 11.3 billion gallons of water and $75 million in 2008, according to Spain. Customers include Coca-Cola, Lockheed Martin, Google, Apple, Wal-Mart, more than 50 cities and towns and seven of the 10 largest real estate investment trusts in the U.S. Most found that they have over-watered in the past, which makes sense. When owners of landscaped areas water too little, they see stress in the form of brown grass and apply more water. There's no similar evidence of over-watering. Because most customers end up saving water, Spain says, the payback period for the initial investment in Hydropoint equipment is about 18 to 24 months. The business is growing fast. "We've just scratched the surface in terms of market opportunity," Spain says. "We address an area of profound waste." |
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