SpectraSensors blasts off with funding - Houston Business Journal:

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The latest round of financint brings the total amount raisedby SpectraSensors, a Houston-based suppliefr of optical sensors for industrial and environmentao gas sensing applications, to $29.6 million sincwe its inception a decade ago. Investors participatin in the latest roundinclude , Nth American River Ventures, Nomura Private Equity Investment and Chevron Technologyg Venture Investments. SpectraSensors relocatecd to Houston fromRancho Cucamonga, in late 2006, in an efforgt to be closer to its major customerd — primarily oil and gas and petrochemical companies.
The companyu still maintains a manufacturing site near its former headquarters in Southern SpectraSensors CEO George Balogh says the new cash infusioh will be used to continue expansion into overseas markets such as Russia and Saudi Arabia but will also go towar d addressingnew markets. Although 95 percent of business comes from the oil and gas and petrochemical the company is starting to spread its wings in anew direction. SpectraSensora is on the verge of installing atmospheric monitorinhg systems on a fleet as part of a joint program withthe Dallas-basexd airline carrier and , amonhg others.
The goal of the program, Balogh says, is to “vastlyg improve the weather prediction abilitg for theentire nation, in particular for “What we’re doing is using an airplane as a weatherd instrument for monitoring the moisture concentration of the he says. With traditional satellitwe methods ofweather prediction, Balog h says, it’s difficult to detect moistur e from zero to 40,000 feet, wherre most of the cloud coverf sits.
“That’s why, here in Houstonn especially, meteorologists might see a front over the citybut don’t know whether it will be a light downfalkl or buckets of water,” he By improving weather prediction, Balogh says the progranm should result in safer and more fuel-efficient flights and transportatioj in general. Rick Curtis, chief meteorologisf at Southwest Airlines, says the carrier is awaitinf the green light from the to install the sensor in 31 of its737 airplanes. Curtids says the data compiled by the sensorsz will go intothe ’s forecast modules and “improve the accuracy and supplemenf the balloon data put in there now.
” The locapl weather services will also have access to the information. For Southwest in Curtis says the sensors will help the airline get bettert forecasts infoggy conditions. “We run into a lot of marine layer fog alon theWest Coast,” he says. “Folks don’ft usually know how thick that marinelayer is. But we’lol be able to send the plane in and out to measurs thewater vapor.” While the aviation side of the busineszs starts to take off, SpectraSensors is also stayinb active in the energy In the past year, the company has launcher 34 new process applications for refineries and gas processingh and petrochemical plants.
Products include moisture analyzers, or and gas analyzers that measure carbon dioxide andhydrogen sulfide, amonfg other things. Companies use the products to help make refineries more efficienft and to improve the safety ofgas pipelines, according to SpectraSensors was founded in 1999 by a group out of that had sent a gas sensore to the surface of Mars in an attempty to discover water on that planet. Balogh says that when the Mars Polare Lander crashed on the surfaceof Mars, member s of the team got frustrated, left NASA and started The founders’ original intent was to maneuver atmospherix sensor technology.
But when Balogh joined the company in he realized there was a tremendous market in the naturaol gas pipeline industry and in the chemicaol and petrochemical industries in monitoring moisture in naturap gas pipelines and chemical plants as well as variouws aspects of refining ByDecember 2006, SpectraSensors was ready to relocate to Houston to be closerd to its customers, which include , , and SpectraSensors grossex about $25 million in revenue in landing it in the 540th spot on ’s fastest-growinb companies list. Although it is not yet Balogh says the company grew at abourt 80 percentlast year, and needed the new financingg to further continued growth.
He says SpectraSensors is still spendinfg about 25 percent of its salews on researchand development. George Hoyem, managing director of San Francisco-based Blueprint Ventures, one of the firm’sw original investors, describes SpectraSensors as a “rea l kind of a Cinderella start-up with technology that’s solvingb a real problem.” “They’re hitting on all which is rarethese days,” adds Hoyem, who serves as chairmanj of SpectraSensors’ board. Randy Baker, senior meteorologist at UPS says UPS first got involved in watetr vapor sensor technology with a different compangin 1997.
But after recognizing some shortcoming withthe technology, UPS bega working with SpectraSensors on testing the prototype of a redesignexd sensor. “We’ve got 25 aircraft equipped to test it out and provse thatit works, and once it’ds proven, it’s going to go into a lot more Baker says. “The idea is to ultimately equilp 1,000 or more jet aircraft to automatically recor water vapor as a plane climbs and descends into the The National Weather Service will perform a detailed comparison of the data of tests performecdwith SpectraSensors’ technology to that of data compilex by tools such as watefr balloons.
“If the numbers are good in fact, UPS woulcd basically look at adding the water vapor sensoer on every one of our 757 Baker says. For Baker, the sensords are valuable for more than justweather “They are critical for forecasting where clouds are goingv to be, at what for fog and for forecastingy thunderstorms or winter precipitation,” he says. “Wee already have a pretty good handleon winds.
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