British Gas launches enhanced smart meter service to help businesses save energy
British Gas, the UK’s biggest energy supplier to small firms, is beefing up its non-domestic smart meter offering with a new service that it says will, for the first time, give its small business customers the information they need to take action to become energy efficient.
The free service, called 'Business Energy Insight’, will enable British Gas business customers that have a smart meters to analyse their energy usage via a user-friendly online 'dashboard’. In addition, customers will be able to get advice on how to reduce their energy consumption from trained British Gas energy efficiency advisors, the company said.
British Gas said the service could cut 10 per cent off an average company’s electricity bill, before the company needs to consider investing in energy efficiency measures. The service builds on British Gas’ smart meter rollout, which to date has seen 200,000 devices installed across its business customer base. The energy supplier said it plans to double that number across its existing 650,000 business customers by the end of 2012.
"We are the largest installer of smart meters," Angela Needle, head of Energy Consultancy at British Gas Business, said. "But it’s not just about fitting meters. Businesses are telling us they want accurate bills and they want to cut their energy costs."
New data
Newly released data collected by British Gas from nearly 7000 smart meters over winter 2010 shows that almost £1 in every £2 of electricity is being spent by businesses outside of the traditional working hours of 8 am and 6 pm. This supports other industry research that shows small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are wasting electricity unnecessarily. A survey last year by energy company E.ON, for example, suggests energy inefficiency could be costing UK’s SMEs £7.7 billion a year.
Needle said the Business Energy Insight service is being launched following positive results from piloting it to 100 business customers last year.
In one case, she said a company was able to cut its annual energy bill by £1200 after analysing its smart meter data and working out it was wasting electricity on a car park, where the lights were being left on over the weekend. Other wasted energy has been pin-pointed to pubs keeping fruit machines switched on 24 hours a day every day of the year; retail units in shopping centres keeping display lights on when the centre is closed; and vending machines left switched on in offices overnight and at weekends.
User-friendly tool
The Business Energy Insight online dashboard has been designed to allow users to view electricity usage on an hourly, daily, weekly and monthly basis. And following behavioural research with a panel of 1000 business customers, British Gas has adapted the tool so it provides energy data in pounds, as well as kilowatts.
"We’ve designed the system so that people can understand the data without having to be experts," said Needle.
British Gas is not the first energy supplier to provide an enhanced smart meter service to its customers. Small energy firm First Utility was the first supplier to roll out smart meters to UK customers and, it too, provides an online tool for customers to view their daily energy consumption and monthly bills.
Moreover, the British Gas service does not provide a detailed breakdown of energy usage across office, room or indeed equipment, something some experts say is necessary to really enable businesses to make meaningful changes to their behaviour.
But Needle pointed out the service was backed up by more than 100 account executive who had been trained to provide energy efficiency advice. And she said British Gas was now looking to apply its Business Energy Insight to gas consumption. In the future, the company is also looking to introduce other services such as a benchmarking tool so that businesses can compare how they perform against other businesses in the same trade or profession, she said.
Rebuilding trust
The new service is also a means for the energy supplier to rebuild trust with its customers. As one of the Big Six energy suppliers, British Gas has come under pressure for rocketing energy prices and lack of transparency in its billing, among other things.
"We want to be upfront and clear and want customers to trust us and choose to stay with us," said Needle.
Any business, whatever its size can sign up to the new service which is free and comes with no strings attached, according to Needle.
For those with a smart meter, it takes around 28 days to join, while it takes three to six months for those that need a smart meter installed.
Source: Greenwise
