Smart Grid Editing and Proofreading Services

A customer is offered a tariff that is cheaper if they use electricity at different times. They say yes, because it is cheaper, and then discover that the saving requires them to do the washing at eleven at night, notice when a four-hour window is happening, and understand what happens to the price when they do not. Six weeks later they are on a worse deal than they started with and they blame the meter.

We edit what smart grid programmes, suppliers and network operators produce — time-of-use and dynamic tariff explanations, demand response and flexibility programme material, smart meter installation and consent communications, data collection and access explanations, in-home display and app guidance, flexibility service agreements for domestic and business participants, settlement and billing explanations for complex tariffs, customer eligibility and suitability guidance, vulnerable customer protections, network flexibility tender documentation, and public information about smart metering programmes. Our editors work on what the customer is actually being asked to do.

The tariff or flexibility explanation is where smart programmes either recruit the right customers or generate complaints, and the failure is describing the mechanism rather than the behaviour. A customer does not need to understand half-hourly settlement; they need to know what they will have to do differently and what happens on the days they do not. We work through these so the required behaviour is stated as concrete actions with times attached, since "shift your usage away from peak" is an instruction nobody has ever followed and "do not use the washing machine, dishwasher or tumble dryer between 4 and 7 p.m." is one they can; so the downside is quantified and shown next to the saving, because a tariff that is cheaper if you comply and dearer if you do not is two numbers and most material publishes one; so the household this suits is described honestly, along with the household it does not, given that recruiting somebody who is out all day and cooks at six produces a complaint rather than a customer; so any event-based element states how much notice is given, through which channel, and what happens if it is missed; so the exit route and any exit cost are stated with the same prominence as the joining offer; and so what the meter records and who can see it is explained plainly rather than referred to a policy. Programmes written this way keep the customers they sign up.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including tariff design, programme material and customer data. We are editors rather than energy, regulatory or data protection advisers, and we offer no view on tariffs, settlement or compliance. What we can do is describe the behaviour rather than the mechanism.