Reading company develops smart socket which reveals if you're using renewable energy

Reading-based Measurable Energy has developed a new smart socket which reveals if it's using more renewable energy.

The company has further created the "measurable.energy" platform to offer facilities managers, building owners and occupants with real-time energy and GHG emissions monitoring, automated controls, and data driven actions to avoid carbon emissions.

Its m.e Power sockets enable simple control and monitoring at scale. The management software at the heart of the m.e platform automatically controls and manages energy and emissions automatically and its machine learning reduces complexity of the system.

Last year the company, which participated in Cop26 in Glasgow, secured the financing to begin scale-up operations of its machine learning and IoT platform to identify and eliminate wasted energy and GHG emissions.

The clean technology company secured investment from Bonheur ASA to scale-up its m.e Platform, designed to simply identify and eliminate wasted energy and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions from buildings.

The m.e Platform™ focuses on Small Power*, sometimes known as Plug Load power, which can account for up to 40 per cent of a commercial buildings’ energy consumption and for which—until now--no effective management system existed. Around half of Small Power can be classed as wasted energy and GHG emissions.

The m.e Platform is designed to simply fit into this infrastructure and management gap, automatically identifying Small Power wasted energy and controlling it, reducing total energy costs and GHG emissions by as much as fifty percent, boosting occupant sustainability behaviour.

m.e’s proposition to facilities management teams, building managers and estate owners is simple; eliminate wasted energy by either switching it off, or use it with m.e’s Virtual Load, an aggregated Demand Side Response (DSR) system that benefits grid operators, helps target use and supports more renewable energy generation to be used.

When the investment was announced, Dr. Dan Williams, CEO of measurable.energy, said: “From our customer pilots in 2020/21 we can confirm that around 30-40% of Small Power can be classified as wasted, in a world that’s focused on efficiency and sustainability, this is an embarrassing fact that can be simply resolved with our technology.

We’ve spent time, worked hard and put a lot of effort in building both a hardware and software platform that’s designed to directly eliminate wasted energy and provide our customers with a simple yet effective toolset. With our pilots over the past year, we’ve proven our technology works, provides huge business value and can help us all achieve Net Zero goals.

The investment from Bonheur means we can take our proven success and scale-up, quickly and effectively. Our global plan to replace all power sockets, everywhere, enabling us all to be part of the Net Zero transition. We’ll be publicly launching in the UK in 2022; now, we’re recruiting and growing in all areas of the business from Machine Learning to Business Development.”

*Small Power is electricity used by devices that are plugged-in via a power socket or fused-spur connection.