London Hydro recently announced findings from its digital customer behavioral energy efficiency program. London Hydro deploys Bidgely HomeBeat for energy efficiency and mobile engagement, and is the first utility in Ontario to deploy customer energy management applications and solutions that leverage Green Button data, including Bidgely HomeBeat, via a cloud-based platform.
In its findings, London Hydro noted that its residential customers, utilizing the HomeBeat web portal and mobile app to access their energy usage information, achieved more than 2% energy savings within the first three months of the solution’s deployment.
The utility customers’ energy savings results exceed, by a factor of two, the industry average for digital communications. For London Hydro customers who downloaded the HomeBeat mobile app, more one-third returned to the app multiple times each week, significantly increasing the utility’s mobile customer engagement.
“As part of the Green Button initiative, London Hydro deployed Bidgely’s HomeBeat cloud-based load disaggregation software in order to help our residential customers access and leverage their own smart-meter data so they could more easily take actions to manage and conserve their own energy use,” said Syed Mir, Vice President of Corporate Services and CIO, London Hydro and Chairman of the Green Button Alliance. “The proven success of this program is evidence that we are in a new era in consumer engagement. We’re proud to be the first utility in Ontario to empower our customers with Bidgely’s HomeBeat mobile application that fully leverages London Hydro’s Green Button Connect My Data platform.”
London Hydro is a Local Distribution Company (LDC) that services more than 152,000 customers in the city of London, Ontario, Canada. The utility recruited 4%, or more than 6,000, of its customers to use the HomeBeat web portal and mobile app as part of an initial deployment.
The HomeBeat solution leverages London Hydro’s Green Button Connect My Data platform and provides London Hydro customers with itemized appliance usage, comparisons to similar homes and personalized insights and recommendations. Bidgely HomeBeat engages customers via various channels including a web portal, mobile app, notifications and email reports.
“Bidgely’s HomeBeat is a significant upgrade in the value delivered to the residents of Ontario compared to other behavioral programs that utilize paper Home Energy Reports (HER) to compare their usage to similar homes,” said Abhay Gupta, CEO, Bidgely. “Our solution generates consumer delight with their utility, going above and beyond customer satisfaction and energy savings. This helps elevate the utility-consumer relationship to a level on par with the experience that consumers have with private sector service providers – one that is digital, personalized and highly relevant.”
