Widely reported today that Smart Meters will be available in every home. (Grauniad cunningly uses the word, ‘may’, not, ‘will. Does it suspect another government announcement with sound bite about a consultation from people that know they are unlikely to still be in power in 11 years time?)
There is lots of investor (venture capital, private equity and institutional), analyst and company interest in who will be the winners in this field and we have been pulling some names together over the past six months to participate in a small discussion group, mid-June, for some of the leaders in this area with investors and possibly a journalist or two.
UPDATE: Got my first Smart metering spam offer about 30 seconds after I first posted this! Now we know who will make the money, https://thebln.com/2009/05/smart-meter-beneficiary-1/
Is that a Smart Meter in your hand Sandy McKinnon or...
Would be curious if anyone wanted to recommend participants?
We are finding that LinkedIn, Twitter and other social media tools are delivering some very random, but often very worthwhile connections so thought we would try a direct call this time and see what comes out.
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We will produce a list of all the names that we discover and present them back here.
Onzo, Erwego, Cambridge Energy Options, AlertMe, bGlobal, DIY Kyoto, Navetas, Smarter Grid Solutions…
Qonnectis (QTI) set to be major beneficiary.
Left you some feedback on Twitter, thought I’d bring it to the table here as well:
The UK has some good home grown display companies: Onzo, CEO, AlertMe, DIY Kyoto. These are (mostly) operating as a straight to consumer play, using a consumer installed clamp for sensing but could migrate to meter based data with some engineering effort. That will be important for the future, particularly if smart meters start being used as a gateway into the household for smart grid functionality.
In hardware development, Sentec are the only independent company I am aware of producing new functionality for gas water and electricity meters, but there are a couple of smaller manufacturers with some innovative ideas: PRI springs to mind.
For data/energy service options, in the UK, there are companies such as bGlobal, Navetas and there are some good examples of smaller energy retailers, such as Poweo in France and First Utility here who are beginning to build new service offerings based on smart meter functionality. Hope that helps!
Just got my first Smart metering spam offer! https://thebln.com/2009/05/smart-meter-beneficiary-1/
Give people access to the smart meter data and I suspect all sorts of wonderful things would happen!
That’s pretty impressive! Are they offering you any time shifting tariffs?
Logica
Oh, and in recent news, Cisco: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8056083.stm.