Utilities engaging SMEs with end-to-end Energy Management Experiences

Project Information

e4SME

Grant agreement ID: 822458

DOI

10.3030/822458

Project closed

EC signature date 9 July 2018

Start date 1 September 2018

End date 31 August 2020

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs

Total cost

€ 1 546 750,00

EU contribution

€ 1 082 725,00

Coordinated by

DEXMA SENSORS SL
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - e4SME (Utilities engaging SMEs with end-to-end Energy Management Experiences)

Reporting period: 2019-09-01 to 2020-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Utilities today are facing disruption form all sides: Load stagnation, financial and regulatory pressures, competition and new markets entrants and increasingly demanding customers. Utilities must therefore fight against lower incomes and higher churn rates using customer-centric digital engagement tools.

One of the most rapidly growing customer segments is made up of Small & Medium enterprises (SMEs), who lack time and resources to pore over detailed energy management analytic tools as larger corporations do, even when they are even more sensitive to energy as running cost.

Engaging SME customers on a more personnel level with innovative and simplified on-line tools in their energy management can open up significant opportunities for utilities, helping them realizing their customer-centric “ New Deal” and meeting their increasingly stringent energy efficiency/ carbon emissions goals. Two technological factors can help both utilities and SMEs, the rollout of electricity and gas smart meters across Europe and the digitalisation of customer service channels via mobile apps and web.

e4SME will help utilities boost SME engagement by helping them identify scalable energy savings and reducing their customer churn. To this end, the objective of e4SME solution is to target and segment SMEs by energy savings potential and opportunity type, identifying unique operational and retrofit opportunities from smart meter data.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During this last year of the project, the following results have been achieved:

1. An stable and robust version of e4SME platform (known commercially as DEXMA Detect) has been deployed:
- Data can be integrated from multiple inputs on a normalized way (bills, data lakes, real time energy data, metadata etc.)
- e4SME pipeline can be calculated for each utility and its associated SMEs,:
Patterns ( to categorize SMEs by their electricity consumption behavior considering weather)
Clustering ( to define clusters of similar SMEs in order to compare with their energy performance)
Benchmarking (to estimate the energy efficiency and savings potential of the SMEs based on previous clusters)
Load disaggregation lite ( to provide virtual disaggregation per appliance based on monthly energy consumption for 8 sectors)
Recommender lite (based on the load disaggregation lite provide a set of retrofits to the SME (i.e substitution to LED technology, improvement of building insulation, HVAC time scheduling, user’s training etc.)
Recommender advance (using hourly energy data and within the energy experts validation calculate a set of advanced retrofits that could be offered to the SME (Solar PV panels, power optimization, reactive power, HVAC remote control etc)
- Two user interfaces (for the utility and the SME) has been developed.
- The whole solution is constantly being validated and tested (Within technical validation of all modules, Q/A dashboards, testing by energy experts etc)
- Key performance indicators are monitored completely, i.e database usage, bugs ...

2. 5 utilities have tested successfully the solution during the demonstration phase within a total amount of 3806 SMEs involved. This demonstration phase has already generated revenue for DEXMA.

3. A new brand identity has been created for commercializing e4SME solution (named as “DEXMA Detect”) and several inbound and outbound marketing actions have been performed:
- Adaptation of the product marketing message depending on the go to market
- Articles, Whitepapers, case studies, press releases and webinars have been performed.
- Mailchimp newsletters have been sent to DEXMA’s customers and prospects.
- Frequent publications in social media ((Linked In, Twitter, Facebook & Youtube) to promote the product, attendance to events, content promotion etc.
- DEXMA has attended to several events to promote DEXMA Detect solution, i.e Free Electrons, Utility Week, DEXMA Day Online in English and Spanish, DEXMA Day in Barcelona and Madrid, Energy Data Access Conference,COP25 2019, EEN Pitch EDP & Galp

4. A business plan for e4SME solution (DEXMA Detect) has been defined together with a communication plan by means of:
- An enterprise sales model is defined with three channels of customer acquisition: DEXMA’s own channel, inbound & outbound commercialisation strategy.
- Optimal processes to close the deals have been defined together with a definitive pricing strategy ( SME of annual license + professional services)
- The impact of the commercialisation phase has been measured by means of OKRs (objectives and Key results)
- Business plan forecasts a revenue of almost €30M by 2024.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The hardware-free e4SME/DEXMA Detect approach goes beyond the state of the art of existing solutions thanks to:

1. Performance: <12% MAE (medium average error) in virtual energy disaggregation vs competitors who tend to focus on appliance discovery (TV, lighting, air conditioning, etc.) in the residential sector.

2. Cost: Nearly 0€. 60-80% cheaper than traditional models. Leverages smart meter deployment.

3. Ease of use: Eliminates need for on-site audit or HW installation thereby reducing maintenance and enabling automatic updates (SaaS model). Easy roll-out to utility SME customer base.

4. Climate change: Since a software solution is easier and faster to scale than hardware, more overall energy savings can be achieved. Plus, LCA impact is lower for software compared to hardware.

5. European Union’s challenges and policies: EU Sustainable development goals number 9 for Utilities and 11 for SMEs (Industry innovation and infrastructure & sustainable cities and communities) respectively will be address within e4SME/ DEXMA Detect
solution allowing utilities to move to an AI-driven solution and SMEs to save energy and money.

6. Gender issues: Equality policy upon recruitment in DEXMA has been followed in order to promote gender balance in the team and among the leading roles.

Now that the end of the project has been achieved, DEXMA has created a robust software solution for power utilities (as DEXMA Detect customers) that will be able to boost engagement with SMEs (end users) by helping them to identify and scale their energy savings. To this end, DEXMA Detect targets and segment utilities’ SME customer base by energy savings potential and opportunity type, identifying unique operational and retrofit opportunities in minutes. Based on just meter consumption data and easy to reach additional metadata, DEXMA Detect provide utilities with portfolio-wide insights to engage SME customers on a one-to-one basis with personalized energy efficiency recommendations. e4SME simultaneously provides utilities with a powerful consumer engagement tool, and helps SMEs save energy in a very competitive landscape with its associated socio-economic impact.

DEXMA is already a scaling global business with a team of specialists dedicated to build and sell e4SME tool, DEXMA Detect at worldwide scale. During the coming months DEXMA will use its current strengths (distribution channels, reputation, inbound and outbound marketing) together with market conditions, advancement of smart meter rollout and national regulations to recover payback via annual licenses and professional services, trying to reach around 3 million of SMES in 3 years.

e4SME dashboard

e4SME audit

e4SME retrofits

e4SME report