Onzo on track to process 1 trillion energy readings by year's end

Energy analytics firm Onzo says it’s on track to record and process more than one trillion (1,000 billion) energy readings by the end of this year.

The data from those readings can help utilities to gain new insights into how their customers are using electricity at home and how this can be used to increase customer satisfaction and operational efficiencies, according to Onzo.

The energy reading milestone will be reached thanks to Cortex, Onzo’s state-of-the-art server architecture. Cortex has already logged more than 300 billion meter readings from the commercial deployment of Onzo’s smart-energy kit.

Onzo says its technology can help households better understand and manage their energy consumption by identifying which appliances people are using in their homes and which ones are using the most electricity.

“By applying intelligence to massive amounts of high-resolution data we can extract information on how customers use energy, even down to identifying individual appliances,” said Nick Hunn, Onzo’s chief technology officer. “That gives us a knowledgebase of information regarding energy usage that we can combine with smart metering data to give previously undreamt of levels of insight.”

The Cortex server architecture is designed to sit alongside current servers to provide a level of data analysis that was previously beyond the reach of non-specialist organizations, according to Onzo.

“Utilities and energy retailers have yet to appreciate the changes that this level of ‘Big Data’ will bring to their operations,” said Joel Hagan, CEO of Onzo. “It’s a message that retailers learnt a decade ago, when they began to capture and mine customer information.  With our ability to process high-resolution energy data, we can bring those same evolutionary changes and benefits to the energy industry.”