British Gas expands big data power for smart meters

British Gas is set to pull more data from households' smart meters after signing a new deal with Wandisco.

The energy company has penned a 500,000, three-year contract with the big data specialist following a trial in which the firm captured real-time data from more than a million household smart meters.

The trial of Wandisco's Non-Stop Hadoop engine in March last year led British Gas to identify cost savings in data storage and processing, as well as cutting downtime and data loss.

Wandisco will now crunch more than double the data it did during the trial, though neither party has yet disclosed the number of smart meters covered in the new contract.

By applying real-time analysis to the energy firm's smart meters, Wandisco could help British Gas match energy supply with demand patterns.

Its Non-Stop Hadoop tool will take data across British Gas's infrastructure to create a consolidated and available body of management information, for which datacentre storage and processing will be handled more efficiently and less expensively, it claims.

David Richards, CEO of Wandisco, said: "Customers see our Hadoop technology as critical for enterprise big data deployments.

"Enlarging our footprint with existing customers like British Gas, in addition to gathering new customers, is a very important part of our strategy.

"This deal clearly demonstrates our ability to expand a small initial big data deployment into a much larger deal."

The contracts follows a 300,000, three-year contract between Wandisco and consumer data analytics firm, Dunnhumby, just before Christmas.

British Gas aims to supply smart meters to all customers by 2020 under its Connected Homes project.

Smart meters allow people to monitor energy usage in real-time, by providing devices displaying their monthly bill information to date alongside how much energy they have used.