Audrey Zibelman's Energy-Saving Software

Audrey Zibelman spent two years in the Peace Corps in the late 1970s, working in a village in Chad which had no electricity. She was struck by how the lack of power exacerbated poverty. “For these people I was living with, about 80 to 90 percent of their day was spent just on staying alive,” she recalls.

Today Zibelman, 54, heads a Philadelphia startup backed by $24 million in venture capital that she hopes will eventually help light up remote areas. For now, the 56 employees at Viridity Energy make software used by dozens of large facilities in the U.S., including commercial buildings and factories, to manage their energy, which is usually their second or third largest expense, according to Zibelman. She launched the company in 2008 after convincing Alain Steven, an expert in utility IT systems, to help build the software. While other power-saving technologies exist, she says Viridity is the first in the U.S. that also lets power guzzlers sell their energy back to the grid. That’s an important feature for institutions with on-site solar panels or generators.