Privacy and terms
What we do with your information, and what you are agreeing to
We use your answers and the photos you send to work out whether a home battery would pay back for your house. If you ask us to, we introduce you to one installer partner. You pay the installer directly; the installer pays us a percentage of the installed price, and you never pay us anything. Everything below is the detail behind those four sentences.
The company
Who we are
Household Energy Solutions is a trading name of GridSmart Intelligence Group Ltd, company number 17434467, registered in England and Wales. Our registered office is Little Orchard, Littleworth Lane, Partridge Green, West Sussex, RH13 8JF.
GridSmart Intelligence Group Ltd is the data controller for the information described on this page. Our registration with the Information Commissioner's Office is pending — we will publish the reference number here once it is issued.
To ask about your information, or anything else on this page, email info@householdenergysolutions.co.uk. We reply from that address, not from a form.
Privacy notice
What we collect and why
Everything we hold about you comes from you, in two stages. The estimate asks four questions and needs no contact details until there is a figure to send. The recommendation needs your own documents, because a real answer depends on your actual tariff, your meter and your fuse board (your consumer unit).
| Information | Why we use it | Our lawful basis | How long we keep it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Postcode, monthly electricity spend, whether you charge a car at home and its mileage band, what you run (hot tub, pool, sauna, heating, solar), whether anyone works from home | To produce your estimate | Steps you ask us to take before any contract | Retention period to be confirmed |
| Name, email address, mobile number | To send you the estimate and the recommendation, and to reply when you contact us | Steps you ask us to take before any contract | Retention period to be confirmed |
| A year of electricity bills, and photos of your meter, your fuse board, where the battery would go, and an electrical certificate if you have one. Your bills also give us your electricity supply number (MPAN) | To read your real tariff, meter type and electrical capacity, and produce your recommendation | Steps you ask us to take before any contract | Retention period to be confirmed |
| The estimate and recommendation we produce | To answer questions about it later and to show what we advised | Our legitimate interest in keeping a record of advice given | Six years from the recommendation date |
| Your mobile number and email, for anything beyond your own enquiry | To tell you about a tariff or price change that affects the advice we gave you, or — if you opt in separately when you send your documents — occasional tariff updates | Your consent, which you can withdraw at any time | Until you withdraw consent |
Your bill contains more than we need — a supplier account number, for instance. We read the parts that matter to the recommendation and do not use the rest. Whether we keep the image itself or only the figures we read from it is still to be confirmed.
You do not have to give us any of this. Without the first row there is no estimate, and without the documents there is no recommendation.
The estimate is produced automatically from your four answers. The recommendation is checked by a named person before it is sent.
Privacy notice
Who sees it
One installer partner, and only when you ask for an introduction. We tell you which company before anything is sent. Exactly what we pass across — contact details and the recommendation, or the document photos as well — is still to be confirmed. The installer is a separate company with its own privacy notice, and once you have agreed to a survey it deals with you directly.
We do not sell your information, pass it to lead-generation companies, or share it with more than one installer at a time.
Companies that process it on our behalf
Like any small business we run on other people's systems. Each of these is under a contract that limits what it can do with your information to what we tell it to do.
- Website hosting and our customer database: provider to be confirmed
- Reading the text from your bill photo: provider to be confirmed, if we use one
- Email and text messages: provider to be confirmed
- Site analytics: Google Analytics
Whether any of these providers store information outside the UK, and what safeguard applies if so, is still to be confirmed.
Privacy notice
Your rights
You can ask us for a copy of what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, or object to how we are using it. Where we rely on your consent you can withdraw it at any time, and where we rely on our legitimate interest you can ask us to stop. Email info@householdenergysolutions.co.uk and say which of these you want.
We answer within one month. If a request is complicated we may take longer, and we will tell you why before the month is up.
Deleting your documents does not delete a record that we advised you, if that record is still within the period in the table above. It does mean the photos themselves are gone.
If something is wrong
Tell us first, at the same address. We acknowledge a complaint about your information within 30 days and answer it as quickly as we can. If you are not satisfied you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113.
Privacy notice
Cookies
Your estimate answers are not kept in a cookie. When your estimate is shown they are saved to our database without your name, under an ID that appears in the page address, so the page can be reopened. We use Google Analytics to see which pages are read, and only if you accept it in the banner; nothing is set until you choose.
Terms
What we do and don't do
When you use this site you are asking us for advice and, if it comes to it, an introduction. These terms say what that covers. They apply between you and GridSmart Intelligence Group Ltd; the installation itself is a separate contract with the installer, described further down.
Your estimate
From four questions, we tell you roughly what a battery on a time-of-use tariff would save at your house, with the assumptions beside the figure. It is openly approximate.
Your recommendation
From a year of bills and photographs of your meter, your fuse board and where the battery would go, we recommend a system size, tell you what it would cost installed, and show you what doing nothing costs alongside it. If the numbers say a battery is not worth buying yet, that is what we tell you.
An introduction, if you want one
We put you in touch with one installer partner. The installer surveys your house, confirms the recommendation, and contracts with you directly.
What we are not
- We are not an installer. We do not fit, commission or maintain anything, and we do not employ engineers.
- We are not a party to your contract with the installer, and we do not take your money for the work.
- We do not switch your electricity tariff or act for you with your supplier. We tell you which tariff the recommendation assumes; changing to it is your decision and your action.
- We do not give regulated financial advice, and we do not arrange finance.
- We may decline to make an introduction, for example where the numbers do not justify it or where we cannot verify what we have been sent.
Terms
Estimates are not guarantees
Every figure we give you is a forecast built on assumptions we show you: your usage as you described it, the tariff rates on the date of the figure, and the system price the installer has told us. Any of those can move. A saving is what the sums say today, not a promise of what your bill will be next year.
The recommendation is only as good as the documents you send. If a bill is out of date, a photo is unreadable, or a house has been rewired since the certificate was issued, the recommendation will be wrong in the same way. The installer's survey exists to catch this before anything is fitted.
Below £200 a month of electricity spend, we say so and tell you a battery is not worth buying yet. That threshold is the same on every page of this site.
You agree that the information you give us is accurate and that you own, or are authorised to make decisions about, the property it relates to.
Terms
How we are paid
We work out whether a battery pays for your house and, if it does, introduce you to an installer. We do not install anything. The installer pays us a percentage of the installed price when the work is finished. You pay the installer directly and never pay us.
We do not publish the percentage here. The amount we will be paid on your job is shown in pounds on your written recommendation. It is built into the installer's price in the same way as any other cost of finding work.
Using this site costs you nothing, and nothing you do here obliges you to buy anything.
Terms
The installer, complaints and liability
The installation is a contract between you and the installer. The price, the survey, the workmanship, the product warranty and your consumer rights on all of those sit with the installer, and if something goes wrong with the work that is who you go to first. We choose installer partners that are MCS-certified. Which consumer code they belong to is still to be confirmed.
We are responsible for the advice we give you. If you think our estimate or recommendation was wrong, tell us at info@householdenergysolutions.co.uk. We acknowledge within two working days and give you a full answer within ten, the same as any other complaint — see how we handle complaints.
Liability
Nothing in these terms limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law does not let us limit.
Beyond that, the limit on our liability to you is still to be confirmed — we will publish it once it is agreed and backed by insurance.
Changes and the law
We may change this page. The date at the top tells you when we last did, and if a change affects how we use information we already hold about you we will email you before it takes effect. These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales.
In plain words
Questions people ask
Will I get calls from lots of installers?
No. Your details go to one installer partner, only after you ask for an introduction, and we tell you which company first. Nobody else gets them.
What happens to the photo of my bill?
We read the tariff, the meter type and your usage from it to build your recommendation. Exactly where it is stored, and for how long, are still to be confirmed above. You can ask us to delete it at any time.
If the battery is no good, who do I go after?
The installer, because the installation contract is with them. If you think our advice was wrong, come to us as well — we answer for the recommendation.
Does being paid by the installer change your advice?
It could, which is why we show it. The percentage is the same whichever system you choose, but a bigger system is a bigger fee. Every estimate shows both sizes with the sums, and tells you when the answer is not to buy.
Can I use the site without giving my details?
Yes. The estimate needs no name, email or phone number. We ask for those only when there is a figure to send you.
Now you know what happens to your answers.
Four questions, no contact details until there is a figure to send you, and the workings beside it when there is.