It Is Time to Free Customers' Energy Data from the System

Over the past weeks, I have been having an argument with my UK energy supplier (retailer). I asked my supplier to install smart meters for gas and electricity in my house in October 2019, as I am planning to install a solar plus battery, as well. Also, I wanted to understand my consumption to optimize the system before buying it. But since I got my smart meters, my energy bill has gone completely wild.

First, I didn’t get charged for gas for the 4 months following installation (until I kindly told them). After a few attempts, my energy supplier managed to connect to the DCC, the company in charge of coordinating data transfers from the meter to the energy suppliers in the UK. Yet problems continued with more missed bills and then being double-charged for the energy consumed.

All of these problems prompted me to assess my energy bill myself. After all, I now have a smart meter that is capturing my energy consumption every 5 minutes. I quickly found out that there is no easy way to access my data. First, I looked for any potential output ports in my home device, with no luck. Then, I searched for it on my energy supplier website, but I could only see a graph showing me 1 day at a time. The supplier also provides an API, but my python knowledge is limited. Finally, I tried with the DCC, but it does not deal with consumers like me.

Frustrated, I asked for the data from my supplier by email, but they only provided a compilation of my annual summaries and not the raw data. As I was in the middle of my discussion with a customer engagement representative from my supplier, a lucky LinkedIn post directed me to a startup called n3rgy. n3rgy can provide access to smart meter data to end consumers for free and to third-party organizations that obtain the permission of the end consumer for a fee.

Empowering the Residential Energy Consumer

Today, there are several residential energy solution providers on the market targeting energy suppliers such as Oracle's Opower, Bidgely, or Uplight in the US or Eliq, ONZO, and GridPocket in Europe. They offer a great suite of tools to monitor, analyze, and manage energy consumption, but they are not available directly to consumers.

Freeing consumers’ energy data by giving consumers access should become a priority. Why shouldn’t consumers be trusted with data on their energy consumption? By overseeing their own data or even giving third-party providers access to their consumption data, consumers can manage their energy demand more effectively.

If I had access to this data, I would have been able to sort my billing problems in minutes, decide which solar plus battery system works best for me, choose to start my dishwasher 1 hour later to use less carbon intensive energy, and move to a time-of-use tariff to reduce my bill. Or, even better, someone could create companies to provide me with these services so that I don’t have to do it myself.