Apply HN: utiliz.co – revolutionizing how consumers buy electricity
The problem is the consumer must then search for the best price, decide how long to commit, figure out if the fees are worth it, is the energy green enough, will the rate be better next month etc. It gets complicated fast. They must also remember to switch before the term ends to avoid sticker shock as the rate spikes at expiry. No wonder only half of eligible consumers switch from their incumbent supplier—the system is biased towards big energy.
Utiliz fixes all this. Customers simply send us a picture of their bill and we take it from there. We track the market daily, find the best plans and times to switch our customers’ suppliers, and do so automatically as often as needed. As the best plans are short term we can save customers a lot of money through frequent switching, something that would be difficult, time-consuming and annoying to do themselves. We work transparently in the background; our customers never have to think about where they’re getting their electricity and have peace of mind knowing they’re always on the best plan. As our user base grows we’ll be able to negotiate even better rates with suppliers and pass all of the savings on ensuring our users stay with us.
Unlike traditional energy brokers we’ll never take money from a power company or add a spread over supplier prices. We’ll be paid a transparent, fair, flat annual fee by our customers.
The opportunity is huge: potential customers include all retail electricity consumers in deregulated states. Eventually we’ll leverage our scale and technology to also serve the commercial electricity and natural gas markets.
utiliz.co Save your energy℠
15 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 48.7 ms ] threadAlso, how will you get users? The reason I looked into it at all was that I was visited door-to-door, but I blew them off and only did the research when I realized they weren't completely full of shit.
We are planning to offer our service for between $30-$50/year, and will offer a money back guarantee if we don't save the customer at least as much as our fee over the incumbent supplier. The idea is to make it no-risk for people to try us. But the value proposition isn’t just saving money, it’s saving time. We handle everything so the customer doesn’t have to spend the time and mental effort to track the market and manually switch suppliers.
The reason we can do this is we are automating the whole switching process; hence it will not cost us much to switch a customer, we'll be able to switch many customers at the same time, and we'll be able to switch customers as frequently as needed to take advantage of short term rates. As we gain a large customer base, we'll also have leverage to negotiate better rates with suppliers, saving customers even more.
Ironically the costs of door to door and telemarketing is part of what creates the opportunity here. NYC may be the exception but outside of the City it's just too cost prohibitive for traditional brokers to do. They focus on the bigger wins (manufacturing and commercial). We will leverage internet / social (facebook ads, promoted tweets, adwords etc.) to reach the individual households. Also we will offer a referral program which will encourage customers to get their friends to sign up. Finally physical events (home shows, street fairs etc.) will help educate potential customers and those who do not use the internet as much.
By the way New York is next on our list after Connecticut (my co-founder Tom is from NY), so if you’re interested please register at utiliz.co!
https://w2.lara.state.mi.us/GasChoice/Choice/CurrentOffers?a...
There is a sufficient disparity in rates to make a business out of it, in my opinion.
At this time their offering is a one time switch onto their partners energy plan and they are masking the rate with gift card type incentives. This is the same if you get a telemarketing call from A N Other energy and decide to sign up.
In our design we have already considered where we intersect with Comcast Energy Rewards and will allow a customer in their coverage area to give us their Comcast account number so we can evaluate that plan along with their other options, similarly we ask them if they are a veteran or want a certain % of renewable energy etc.
I think your app in its current form has the wrong form factor.
Regarding form factor our plan is a responsive site that down scales to touch devices. That will cover both desktop and mobile well.
Just tell the customers "Text us, email us, fax us.... etc..."
But by and large we would accept applications any way they would want to be send but I question the value of building MMS in the MVP. This would cater to the 'camera enabled non browser devices' and our research shows this is a tiny slice of our audience. However this is a quick thing to build so as we progress research on our target audience we may change our mind.