There's been a major boost for a new Irish company that aims to save money for businesses here by changing their lighting systems.

UrbanVolt was founded last year, it offers to provide the capital to change a company’s lighting system to energy-efficient LED lighting and it gets paid by sharing in the savings made.

It’s targeting any business that has electricity bills of €2,000 per month or more.

UrbanVolt’s business has been given significant additional voltage - the Swiss Investment Fund is to make available up to €30m in initial funding to finance its expansion.

The SUSI Fund is Europe’s largest private fund dedicated to energy-saving and carbon-reducing commercial projects and its funding should help UrbanVolt extend its reach into the UK, Europe and beyond.

The start-up which includes Irish rugby star Jamie Heaslip among its backers has become the first company from the country to sign up to the UN's Global Lighting Challenge.

The initiative, which was launched at last year's UN Climate Conference in Paris, hopes to improve the energy efficiency of 10 billion lights around the world.