A university spin-out company is helping large companies reduce their utilities bills.
Rumm, which was launched last year, specialising in supporting companies consuming more than £100,000 of electricity, gas or water per year.
A spinout from the University of Glamorgan, Rumm — an acronym for Remote Utility Monitoring and Management — claims it can potentially reduce a company’s utility consumption by up to 20%.
The company provides a full energy/utility service to customers, ranging from fuel purchasing, meter installation, advanced monitoring and targeting to the project management of engineering and IT solutions.
It also provides customers with customised on-line utility information and works with them to reduce their costs and ensure they remain low.
The monitoring and targeting is carried out remotely using the Rumm’s web-based monitoring and analysis software.
Cost saving opportunities through monitoring the clients’ utility consumption patterns 24 hours a day, seven days a week are then investigated, with the relevant benchmarking of consumption — and monitoring of unusual trends.
Once a repeatable consumption pattern is achieved a statistical proactive alarm system is set up to notify clients if it deviates from the set parameters.
Rumm has significantly reduced the energy bills for Ebbw Vale-based Yuasa Batteries UK a (17% reduction in 10 months) — independently verified by a Carbon Trust consultant.
In addition it provided significant energy savings for the Celtic Manor Resort in Newport.
Latest clients include GE Aircraft, RPC Containers, Peters Foods, Allevard Rejna and UWIC.
And it has recently been installing its web based utility monitoring system into new build homes developed by the Manchester based company Inspired Developments.
Rumm’s technology will enable the owners of the new homes to monitor their water, gas or electricity consumption via the Rumm website with usage updates every 30 minutes.
In addition Rumm has secured an order for a sizeable pub chain in London to evaluate to help reduce its carbon emissions and its utility expenditure.
Rumm’s director, Jamie Watkins, said:
‘There is a huge amount of cutting-edge technology sitting behind the service.
However, for our clients the important fact remains that we are saving them considerable amounts of money year on year, whilst at the same time reducing the negative effect of unnecessary consumption on the environment.
We pride ourselves on being a very reliable and proactive service provider to which the market is very receptive too.’
Rumm is benefiting from the support and guidance of the small business support venture Business in Focus.
The company provided mentoring and marketing support and has helped Rumm secure nearly £50,000 in funding, including an Assembly investment grant of £33,000.
PDF