There is a lot of change in the energy market and one initiative which might have slipped through the horizon scans of Industrial and Commercial /SME/ Public sector segments is the initiative regarding non-domestic smart meter data access.
In early June, BEIS published their decision regarding ‘Maximising Non-Domestic Smart Meter Consumer benefits.’
Smart meter data
The policy change allows non-domestic customers and their nominated 3rd Parties access to their energy supplier’s smart meter data (profile class 1-4 power and gas consumption meters below 732MWh) access to HH data upon request within 10 days of the request for free.
Utilidex believes this mandate, subject to ratification in Parliament, can provide much more value
This presents a major opportunity for suppliers and their related supply chain to start addressing the customers’ energy and carbon reduction needs.
Utilidex believes this mandate, subject to ratification in Parliament, can provide much more value to the traditional NHH and NDM sites, who traditionally have had either no or expensive access to their own data.
Carbon reduction needs
The true challenge though, is what can be done with access to raw data and the opportunities to bring these to life, particularly for end-users who have no dedicated environmental or energy manager and who are time-poor but cost and carbon aware. This is as much a design challenge as it is a data access problem and free data access presents just the start of the journey.
To date, most of the alerting and reporting frameworks have been dedicated to buildings. With access to smaller sites, they can apply the same frameworks and benchmark to a much wider community centered around vacant energy, energy efficiency, and cost per sq. foot.
Looking forward, they recognize there is an opportunity in power from the onset of HH settlement to look at providing energy consumption signals to avoid red zone costs (can amount to 15p per kWh depending on the site’s location, that roughly equates to summer and winter 24 wholesale prices for the commodity).
Data access problem
That is why the team Utilidex has begun their initiative now to support data access for all the customers’ sites, many of which are small, and in particular, develop the use cases that make data insights actionable.
They have already found use cases supporting social housing residents, batteries, and subtle changes in energy consumption in the hospitality sector. There are many more, and they are looking forward to engaging with customers old and new to support their needs with ‘customer-centric solutions.’
Users can purchase any of the software products directly as a customer, through their partner consultancy firms (TPIs), or via energy suppliers. Their goal is to make it easy for the users to work together, reduce operational spending, and help the users gain a competitive edge.