geo buys ONZO and has funds to accelerate shift to smart home energy

Hardwick-based geo, whose technology is being provided to half of the UK’s homes under the government’s smart meter rollout, has acquired ONZO, the market-leading energy disaggregation specialist.

Hardwick-based geo is creating a sustainable future where homes automatically and seamlessly manage their overall consumption and carbon footprint, without disrupting householders’ lives. It provides management and and optimisation systems and AI-enabled data analysis for solar, EVs, batteries and home heating along with in-home displays to the UK Smart Metering programme, with 6 million units shipped to date. London-based ONZO’s energy disaggregation technology details exactly how devices in homes consume energy and drive energy bills.

The deal means smart energy specialist geo, which was founded in 2006, is able to accelerate its vision to deploy Whole Home Optimisation across the UK and Europe. By adding this extra intelligence to geo’s market-leading Whole Home Optimisation capability, which uses machine learning to enable homes to fully exploit their energy tariff, households will now be able to automatically obtain the biggest possible energy savings, while minimising waste and household carbon emissions.

At the same time, geo revealed the successful conclusion of a strategic funding round to further accelerate delivery of its plan.

“It’s great to be joined by the innovative and creative team at ONZO,” said Steve Cunningham, geo’s CEO. “Combining our two businesses adds real strength to geo’s expertise and extends our leadership in the Energy IoT and data science environments. It also allows us to provide even greater savings to the millions of geo and ONZO customers across Europe.

“2021 is going to be an exciting time for geo and our partners: we commenced the delivery of our new EV charging and home heating optimisation capabilities earlier in the year. And as we complete the integration of ONZO’s capabilities, we will introduce the ability for the millions of households to automatically reduce their energy consumption further still through Whole Home Optimisation.”

Rob Merrington, managing director of ONZO, said: “Becoming part of the successful geo team is a perfect platform for ONZO’s evolution. It’s clear there is genuine synergy within the current product suite provided by both businesses, and a significant opportunity for future developments, that will benefit both GEO and ONZO’s current and future customers.”

The news has been welcomed by customers of both companies.

Richard Hughes, director of sales and marketing for EDF’s customers business unit, said: “We’re very pleased to see this step from geo and ONZO. Our work with both companies over the last few years has been very successful. The world of smart energy management is maturing rapidly, moving from theory to reality. We are excited to see how the combined capability of geo’s smart energy gateways and ONZO’s energy disaggregation and home energy optimisation can help EDF customers save money on their bills and help Britain achieve net zero.”

The finance raise sees strategic investors the Low Carbon Investment Fund, Schneider Electric and West Coast Capital join the business and will allow geo to accelerate its mission to enable every home to achieve energy and carbon savings through Whole Home Optimisation.

“geo’s positioning at the centre of the home energy management ecosystem makes it a very valuable proposition, significantly reducing energy consumption and therefore accounting for less CO2 emissions,” said Axel de Megille on behalf of the Low Carbon Investment Fund.