Pason swallows up Energy Toolbase

As industries mature, companies consolidate. Little businesses get bought up by big ones, and sometimes two smaller companies join forces to build on each other’s strengths. In clean energy, this process has included acquisitions of promising companies by oil, gas and utility companies, such as Shell buying up Silicon Ranch and Total buying SunPower.

Software is no exception, and this morning Energy Toolbase and Pason Power announced that they are combining their business to offer a more complete suite of solutions that they say will allow solar and energy storage developers to more efficiently develop and deploy projects.

But similar to the trend in progressive married couples, the new entity will retain both the Energy Toolbase and Pason Power brands, while filing taxes jointly.

As niche companies in a nascent industry, neither of these companies are particularly large, and the combined workforce is only 45 employees. However, there is a much larger entity in this picture: Pason Power’s parent company, Pason Systems, a Canadian supplier of data management systems for oil and gas drilling which brought in around $230 million in revenues last year.

This week, Pason announced a $20 million investment to gain a majority interest in Energy Toolbase, and this appears to be part of a larger strategy of diversification for Pason Systems. “With the combined capabilities of Pason Power and the Company, and building on Pason’s deep data management expertise, we are positioning ourselves for meaningful growth and presence in the solar and energy storage market,” notes Pason Systems President and CEO Marcel Kessler.

Pason Systems will also provide manpower to the new team, with Pason Power Managing Director Enrico Ladendorf estimating that they will leverage an additional 20 employees from the parent company, as well as being able to leverage Pason Systems’ service network and help desk teams of roughly 355 people, and R&D department numbering around 160 employees.

The end goal here will be to offer better, more complete software, and a joint press release speaks of a “shared vision” to simplify the complex project estimating and asset control workflows that developers and asset owners have to deal with.

Both companies will be exhibiting at the Solar Power International Trade show September 23-26 in Salt Lake City.

Correction: This article was corrected at 11:15 AM EST on September 13. We originally stated that Shell had bought SunPower, when in fact it was Total. The change has been made and we regret the error.