The government plans to provide up to £8.8 million to develop innovative approaches to smart energy management.

The Non-Domestic Smart Energy Management Innovation Competition aims to drive innovation in the energy services market in three priority sectors: hospitality, retail and schools.

It will help businesses become more energy efficient and cut their energy costs, enabling them to boost productivity and contribute to the UK’s emissions reduction targets.

BEIS said: “It will also develop and strengthen the market for energy management products and services for smaller non-domestic sites, including both independent businesses and chains.”

Up to nine projects, distributed across the three sectors, will be chosen to receive initial funding to develop energy management solutions using smart meter data.

The competition will be delivered in three phases: feasibility studies and developing smart meter software/data tools (March 2018 – summer 2018) , initial testing with customer organisations (Autumn 2018 – early 2019) and roll out or further testing of the tools (early 2019 – early 2020).

BEIS will pick a research and evaluation conductor, who will work hand-in-hand with competition participants.