UK’s first Smart Innovation Superhub Opens in Southampton
Energy boss on a mission to accelerate smart rollout
PROCODE BOSS PLEDGES TO FINISH BRITAIN’S SMART ROLLOUT
- New Procode Smart Superhub is home to a 300-strong team of expert developers in Eastleigh, Southampton
- One of UK’s most celebrated IT innovators will demonstrate how innovation will fast-track smart rollout completion
- Procode Smart Superhub’s mission is to improve every households’ standard of living
The UK’s first Smart Innovation Superhub has opened in the heart of the UK’s Silicon Beach, ready to fast-track the smart rollout through to completion with long-awaited and life-changing innovation.
Procode is Great Britain’s first Smart Innovation Superhub which brings together a team of 300+ developers – many with two decades of experience in this space – to deliver smart enhancements and solutions designed to improve the standard of living for UK citizens and cut public spending. The Smart Superhub’s innovations are expected to benefit at least a third of smart-enabled households by the end of next year.
Ian Burgess, Managing Director of Procode, is the leading innovator in the smart space, being the driving force behind the UK’s first ever specialist Smart Pay As You Go (PAYG) supplier, Utilita. More recently, Ian and his team have created the UK’s first smart data communications adapter to rectify the inefficiencies and connectivity black spots consumers have been forced to endure by the national smart network operator. He comments on the launch:
“The government’s 2013 smart rollout began with the intention of smart-enabling every home and business in the UK. It failed because it was back to front – a bit like giving every household a car, but a decade before roads had been invented. The features and benefits associated with becoming smart-enabled just weren’t there, and as a result only half of the UK’s households accepted one and a large cohort refused to accept one.
“For more than two decades our agile team has been pushing smart experimentation barriers to identify solutions and technologies that can provide a better standard of living for each individual household, and more holistically, for us all as a nation moving towards net zero. Our innovations have provided evidence that smart connectivity is the solution to many of the UK’s biggest challenges.”
Examples of Procode’s Pioneering Innovations
- Intelligent Data Adaptor – A Data Communications Company (DCC) adaptor based on a reliable and robust cloud platform to offer high‑performance access to smart meters, from the smallest to the very largest suppliers.
- Power Up – A self-serve interest-free loan applied to a PAYG energy meter via an app. Since 2017 Utilita’s Power Up feature has enabled households to stay on supply when funds weren’t available to them. Ofgem has since mandated all suppliers to follow suit.
- Transfer Credit – Enabling PAYG households to transfer their energy credit from one meter to another to stay on supply.
- Smart Score – An app-based energy efficiency rating tool that identifies bespoke solutions to cutting wastage through the disaggregation of smart meter data.
- Ecofit – A software that collates 80 disparate data sources on UK homes to discover which homes are eligible for the UK’s various decarbonisation and energy efficiency grants. This delivers a simple snapshot for households to identify how their home could be adapted to make their energy spend go further.
- Live Carbon Reporting Dashboard – live dashboard presenting a full carbon report across all areas of the business operations. The most transparent way to report a companies’ carbon footprint.
- Canary Care Independent Living – A remote monitoring service helping healthcare professionals and family members monitor and support those they care for, from a distance. The NHS is an early adopter.
Bill Bullen is founder and CEO of the Luxion Group, parent brand of Procode, Utilita Energy, and Canary Care Smart Independent Living. He comments:
“Innovating socially responsible and financially beneficial features to make smart meters a must-have is a far more economical way to complete the rollout. We have created a 300-strong team to deliver innovations that will give the smart rollout the shot in the arm that it so desperately needs.
“As the CEO and founder of the ninth largest domestic energy supplier, we have successfully smart-enabled 95% of our households and we have done so by innovating the smart PAYG offering so that it’s too good to miss out on. The launch of Procode is an extension of that – adding indisputable value to the lives of those who choose to have a smart meter.”
The UK’s slow-moving smart rollout journey
Smart Energy Great Britain is a not-for-profit company which is fully funded by the UK’s domestic energy suppliers as per the Conditions of Electricity & Gas Supply, Electricity Distribution and Gas Transporter Licences.[1]
After missing its original 2019 target to complete the rollout, the government adjusted its deadlines a further three times and reduced its target installation levels for smart meters from “all homes and small businesses” in 2019, to its current target of 74.5% of homes and nearly 69% of small businesses to have smart meters by the end of 2025. At the end of March 2023, more than a decade after the rollout started, only 57% of all electricity and gas meters were smart.[2]
The UK’s own ‘Silicon Beach’
Procode’s Smart Innovation Superhub is based in Eastleigh, Southampton – the heart of the UK’s thriving Silicon Beach – ranked by CBRE as the European tech sector’s fifth largest supercluster.[3] Procode joins major technology innovators such as Starling Bank, Amazon, IBM’s R&D Hub and startups such as Aquark and Audioscenic.
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