Open Energy Market (OEM) has created an online marketplace on which corporate energy contracts are traded, introducing digital innovation into the antiquated, manual energy brokerage process in order to improve transparency and reduce energy costs for large energy users.
Rationale
Corporate energy market contracts total £1.2 billion per year, of which 85% are bought using an energy broker according to Ofgem.
Founded in 2013 and based in Surbiton, OEM works with all 16 major providers of gas and electricity as an online tender and trading platform for large (£40k+) energy contracts. This has streamlined and increased the transparency of the laborious broker based process.
Business customers can access live energy monitoring services and usage analytics upon providing meter readings. Energy providers are then able to place live bids for the contracts through a reverse auction process via the platform.
Customers include Dairy Crest, Easyjet, Southampton Football Club and Suffolk County Council (for public infrastructure such as street lighting).
OEM will use the funds to increase their direct sales force and software team, implement platform development including extensions into other commodities such as water and expansion into the US market.
