Centrica has partnered wtih Eni gas e luce of Italy. The five-year partnership arrangement will help Centrica to move its Hive smart home devices into the European market. Centrica also acquired Belgian power management firm REstore in deal worth €70 million (£62 million) in cash. Headquartered in Antwerp, REstore manages 1.7GW of peak load from a portfolio of industrial and commercial customers across Belgium, the UK, France and Germany.
The acquisition of Alertme by British Gas is now bearing fruit for the energy company. According to Centrica, British Gas’s parent company, connected home services revenue is up 30% to the end of April 2017, with over 600,000 connected hubs installed and over 900,000 connected products sold to date.
As an IT manager responsible for hundreds of server systems I know the benefits of smart monitoring and getting an alert at the slightest indication of a problem on any of my servers. That is why almost a year to the date I wrote how I think the Connected Home will blur the line between business and domestic services and the direction of the connected home. Therefore, I was excited to hear that British Gas is developing a smart boiler solution that does just that.
British Gas is determined to make the connected lifestyle a norm for its 4 million plus customers, along with the rest of the UK. The company is investing millions into developing and offering its customers added value services via its ‘Connected Home’ initiative.
Of the over 30 energy suppliers in the UK, for some time, only British Gas was offering a smart energy management platform as part of their energy services. Customer needing an energy management solution would have to do it independently or use British Gas Hive. Through a joint partnership with Nest, the smart thermostat company, nPower is offering their own smart energy management service to compete with British Gas.
British Gas has selected AlertMe to offer what it calls “Personalised Energy Efficiency Advice Service” (PEEAS) to its smart meter customers in the UK. Under the agreement, data from customers smart meters will be manage and analyse by AlertMe to help customers manage their energy. According to AlertMe they will be conducting a pilot of up to 10,000 homes starting this summer.
AlertMe has signed a commercial and strategic partnership with British Gas, one the UK’s leading utility supplier last month as it went through a second round of investing, raising a total of £15 million. British Gas has invested £5.7 million for a 15.96 percent stake in AlertMe, making it a key investor along with VantagePoint Venture Partners, Index Ventures, Good Energies and SET Venture Partners. British Gas’s stake will give them a seat on the board of AlertMe.
AlertMe, the award-winning home energy management service, announced the launch of AlertMe Energy, giving consumers the ability to monitor their home energy usage online and act on that information to reduce their bills and carbon footprint. AlertMe Energy includes easy-to-install hardware and an online service that can be accessed from any Web browser. It is also tightly integrated with Google PowerMeter, making it easy to track energy consumption live from an iGoogle home page.
British Gas New Energy and AlertMe.com, the award- winning provider of smart energy saving systems for homes, have today announced an agreement that will see the two companies trial home energy management technologies, to help British Gas customers cut their energy consumption, save money and reduce their household carbon emissions.