The Real Time Data Myth

We often get asked if HUGO can give real time data.

The simple answer is no.   Even our competitor APPs (whose name we won’t mention) can only access data every 2 hours at best. This is the most anyone can do over the cloud currently.   So, if you think you’re looking at real time data the best you’re doing is looking at data up to two hours behind real time, and more than often your data is often around 4 – 8 hours behind.

Why not show two hour delayed data?

We decided that there was little merit in showing delayed same day data as this would lead to a poor user experience when you first open HUGO, and we think real-time data is overrated.

Real-time data is a product that we’ve been sold for the past ten years with the advent of smart meters,  However, the energy industry completely missed a trick here.  Thinking that people would be obsessed with turning on a kettle and then running to their display to see how much electricity it uses, is simply not what people do.  This is also of limited value because real savings comes through understanding your energy patterns and behaviour change.

One of the most effective ways of using smart meter data is to view your daily usage pattern.  For example, below is a screenshot of a user’s daily gas usage profile when they first installed HUGO and next to it is their daily gas usage profile after they realised how much it could be reduced over the summer.  A typical daily profile usually does not change, so understanding it and how to optimise it is where the data can be really useful.