TALKING HEADS Pilgrim Beart
Pilgrim Beart is chief executive officer and founder of DevicePilot
The world is getting connected As device interconnection continues to grow apace, Pilgrim Beart, the man behind the Hive smart thermostat, believes that the lines between product manufacturer and service provider are becoming increasingly blurred
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ives may feel as though they have been put on hold in the last few months but Pilgrim Beart believes that COVID-19 has been speeding up the development of new technology to connect the devices in our buildings and homes. “If you are an existing hardware manufacturer, connecting your product isn’t just another feature, it can totally reshape your business model,” the chief executive and founder of IoT management company DevicePilot, a service monitoring platform for connected devices, told EiBI. Beart’s excitement stems not from seeing specific applications arrive but when they are connected to others to maximise their potential. “You have devices like solar panels and electric vehicles that can be connected. I’ve had solar panels on my home since 2011 and now have a smart meter and an electric vehicle. I now have an agile tariff where the price changes every half hour based on the retail price. The joining up to be done is to charge the car when the electricity is really cheap. All the hard work has been done.” Beart believes that a similar trend will be seen in commercial buildings. “BEMS and HVAC systems are incredibly old fashioned and very hard to understand. Almost every building you go into is either over-heated or under-heated, let alone energy efficient. It’s the worst of all worlds and you just wonder how we managed to get here. I think it’s because it’s just because there have been incumbent suppliers doing the same old thing and nobody has challenged.” Beart looks to his own experience with smart thermostat, Hive. Back in 2006 he founded AlertMe which was sold to British Gas in 2015 and became the basis for a product that has become a household name. “Before Hive and Nest came along very little had changed for many years.” But as Hive developed and the customer base grew so the operational problem was growing exponentially. “When you supply devices into the world managing becomes difficult,” said Beart. “You need to deliver system availability. There are the same general problems of management – correct
Beart: 'incumbent suppliers have been doing the same thing and nobody has challenged'
‘The Internet of Things and service are very much two sides of the same coin’ installation, devices going off line. Devices not working properly is just not good enough. Managing them becomes difficult. That was the big learning curve.” And that was the inspiration to set up DevicePilot. “Our customers are companies that deploy the technology. As they deploy more they have this operational challenge and they discover that DevicePilot can help them. The great thing about connected devices is that you can see what is going on. If occupants are fiddling with heating controls then they are probably not happy. Instead of reacting then you can see to take action before the customer knows there is a problem. That transforms the customer experience.”
Devices increasing by a factor of ten every decade Beart believes that this demand can only increase. “The reason is because we are deploying more and more of this technology. The number of devices is increasing by a factor of ten every decade and it’s going to carry on. If they don’t work then the world is in trouble. You want to get to a point that the device is so reliable you take it for granted, like a light switch. But it takes a lot to get to the mainstream in the same way as smartphones. They are reliable and easy to use.”
Beart recalls that one of DevicePilot’s early customers was Pod Point, the EV charging point supplier. “They had deployed their equipment and it wasn’t working quite as it should have,” added Beart. By using Device Pilot they could see for the first time exactly what was going wrong and solve the problem. It drives up quality. Then when you’ve solved the technical problems you can move onto the business problems. You can see if the charging points are all in use and customers aren’t able to charge. So you can do something about it.” It is this transformation from being a product supplier to a service provider that will be a feature of the future. Suppliers that sell a product and forget it will find that controlling it remotely will transform their business. “It will lead them to become a service provider. The Internet of Things and service are very much two sides of the same coin.” And the provision of energy as a service is part of this growing wave, believes Beart. “It seems strange that it hasn’t been thought of before. Councils are now buying light as a service. They are realising that a few companies do it better and more economically.” This is a change Beart can see extending to the home. “It’s part of a massive trend in everything. Increasingly, people don’t want to buy a car. They just want the convenience of using one when they need it. People are happy to pay a fee for their security but not energy at the moment. But what people want is a comfortable home, not a thermostat. What needs to happen is that heat and light are provided as a service.” Beart can see a rapid evolution in the market in the coming years. “A whole eco-system starts to develop when you join things up,” he adds. “The more connected devices you have the greater the needed for a single pane of glass to give you the big picture of what is going on. It is a really interesting place to be. Our purpose is to shine alight to show everyone what is going on in a building. This is as valuable to the end user as it is to the service provider. Things are really beginning to join up.”
34 | ENERGY IN BUILDINGS & INDUSTRY | SEPTEMBER 2020
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