Government has made up to £8.8m available to firms that can help smaller companies make better use of smart meter data in order to reduce energy consumption.
The competition aims to help accelerate products and services that enable smarter energy use with minimum interventions.
The rationale is that many small firms have little or no energy management resource and that current ‘smart’ energy products and services based on data analytics are usually aimed at larger firms, where gains are higher.
Yet around 2 million electricity smart meters and around 700,000 smart gas meters will have to be installed by 2020 under the smart meter programme. If customers cannot make use of them, it would be a waste of time, money and effort.
Retail, hospitality and schools are the initial target sectors. See competition details here.
The launch follows government’s funding package to help unlock domestic demand-side response, as well as funding for non-domestic DSR innovation.
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