meterd

Over het initiatief / About the initiative

meterd

In welke fase zit jouw initiatief? / In what stage is your initiative?

Startupfase

Heb je jouw initiatief al gevalideerd? / Did you validate your initiative?

We started working on Meterd around a year ago and we managed to put a lot of work into the project. At the end of 2023 we finalized our two first pilot projects in Poland. First project involved two buildings, a boutique hotel and a company headquarters. Second project involved a medium sized municipality where we finalized the first phase of the project involving four public school buildings. The key difference between our pilots and the upcoming projects is that for now they operate on the MVP version of our software. The current version of the software is purely utility focused, hence despite the lack of looks, it delivers a meaningful part of our value offering. What’s important is that the majority of data points are being collected and displayed in real-time. We are already working on structuring this data to make good use of it in our future, AI-powered automatization efforts. Up to date, the software already allowed us to pinpoint issues with utility management of both clients and provide meaningful change with e.g 40% average water cost reduction. Another way in which the idea behind meterd was validates is the fact that our start-up managed to win the 2024 Tilburg University Challenge (Business Ready), is approaching the final stage of the 2024 Erasmus University Challenge and became one of the 10 most impactful start-ups of the Central Brabant region in the Connection event hosted by Midpoint Brabant.

Meer informatie over jouw initiatief / More info about your initiative

Municipalities and their affiliated institutions (such as schools, theaters, and other buildings governed by the municipality) have a problem with efficiently monitoring and managing energy consumption, production, heating, water, and air quality in order to optimize their operations, enhance sustainability, and improve the well-being of their citizens. Rapidly rising energy costs and economic instability make cities and their authorities volatile to unpredictable utility price fluctuations.

To address these challenges, municipalities often choose to invest their limited resources in modern technologies, such as photovoltaic energy, which promise to help them reduce energy bills in publicly-managed buildings. However, the downside is the complexity of integrating these technologies across various properties in diverse infrastructures and ensuring that the data collected is analyzed to allow for informed decision-making. In practice, municipalities are often unaware of their efficiency shortcomings and good energy-transition intentions end up being costly and ineffective.

This is why we developed a data-based solution to address these challenges, which covers the following functionalities:

Facility Auditing & IoT System Installation

Our team of facility experts will visit your buildings and conduct a free efficiency audit. We will determine the exact number and type of smart meters needed for your buildings. This is also when we deliver a preliminary investment cost estimation.

Real-Time Utility Usage Monitoring App

The meterd app is an all-in-one, mobile and desktop platform for monitoring your utility usage in real-time. It will assess the efficiency performance of facility clusters, single buildings and even specific devices, such as solar panel arrays and heat pumps.

Advanced Data Analytics & Smart Performance Alerts

From energy usage and production, to water consumption, heating, air quality and ventilation – we have got you covered. Your app will notify you about the performance of your buildings and let you harness the true potential of your facilities’ data.

CSRD-Compliant ESG Reporting Information

European businesses are expected to disclose their carbon emissions and comply with complicated building sustainability regulations. The meterd app will let you directly source Scope 1 & 2 emissions data to streamline and simplify ESG reporting.

Sustainability & Cost-Optimization Consulting

You will not be left alone with your data. Our team of IoT system experts will help you analyze your facilities’ utility performance and propose optimization strategies. Our goal is to help you significantly cut your utility costs while improving sustainability.

Efficiency-Optimization Projects Implementation

The meterd experience does not stop there. To help you achieve the highest energy efficiency and further lower costs, our consultants will propose extra optimization projects. Together with our hardware provider, we will help you go the extra mile.

Wat is er anders/nieuw aan jouw idee/oplossing t.o.v. bestaande oplossingen? / What is different/new about your idea/solution compared to existing solutions??

Currently, there are no truly comparable businesses to our solution. This is due to the fact that such a complex systems integration is difficult to achieve and reducing the information asymmetry between sustainability hardware providers and customers is often at a disadvantage to the businesses. 

As our closest competition we can assume ESG reporting software providers such as Ecocharting, Envirly or Ecovadis. They provide their customers with a “middle-man style” service, by streamlining and simplifying ESG auditing and reporting. What separates us from such companies is that we operate on hard evidence. 

Scope 1, 2 & especially Scope 3 emissions data is currently nothing more than an educated guess since it is so hard to track exactly how much organizations contribute to GHG emissions. With the usage of a real-time utility monitoring system like ours, we can reliably report the true impact of a business’s facilities. This is a paramount advantage considering the upcoming CSRD and EPBD directives.

In addition, we don’t just leave our customers with the diagnosis but help them better their sustainability efforts with actionable consulting recommendations. With the help of our partners, we have the capability to implement those recommendations by modernizing our customer’s buildings – this is what we call a true end-to-end solution.

Wat zijn jouw volgende stappen om het verder te ontwikkelen? / What are your next steps to develop the initiative?

What’s next for us? We are finalizing our new version of the desktop platform/app and software that would already offer the entire value of utility measurement and analysis we are planning on delivering in line with the current European reporting standards. We have multiple project proposals lined up and we would love to share some details in the near future. These include larger municipalities in Poland and the Netherlands as well as businesses such as DAF trucks. Upon our initial meeting they already expressed serious interest in implementing our solution in 7 of their production and service facilities across Poland.

Our current focus is placed on landing impactful pilot projects in the Netherlands. We are in contact with several business par management companies and are looking to install our system to future-proof dutch businesses and help them save on utility costs. In addition, we are working on creating special development programs for the public sector, so that we can manage municipality buildings and university campuses.

Wat heb je nodig om (nog meer) impact te maken met dit initiatief? / What do you need to make (more) impact with this initiative?

As previously mentioned, our primary goal for the upcoming months is to test our solution on large building clusters, by piloting business parks and publicly-managed facilities. Landing such projects would allow us to quickly scale the solution and accelerate organizational learning.

Managing multiple, large projects also has other advantages. One of our primary goals for achieving exponential future growth is the utilization of big data collected from past projects to build and train first-party algorithms, thus creating utility usage prediction and management models. This would not only allow us to automate the utility usage optimization service for our clients, but create an extremely useful tool to combat and manage grid congestion, which is a rising concern in the Netherlands. We are actively seeking expert advice, investment and building a team to further research and innovate on this domain.