New Startup Woos People To Switch To Renewable Energy With Low Costs

Renewable energy is in our future, but everybody need to be wary about electric companies exploiting sustainability. One man that’s been involved with these utilities in the past detailed poor service and high costs toward consumers. That’s been the fuel behind a duo that’s founding their own smaller-scale energy company in the United Kingdom.

Bulb began with Hayden Wood and Amit Gudka back in August 2015 and they’ve been providing a great alternative for energy supply. Wood noted that utility companies that were supporting sustainability didn’t have a clear plan on how it was using renewable energy and they were charging customers much more than they needed to. Wood explained to Business Insider that, “eco-friendly energy is only ‘marginally more expensive than the wholesale cost of conventional energy coming from gas and coal.’”

Bulb promises on their website that they will charge just one fee for both electricity and gas. Based on a full table on annual dual fuel costs in London, Bulb is about 200 pounds less (roughly $250 USD) than the cheapest among the “Big Six” utility companies, British Gas.

At the moment, Bulb offers 100 percent renewable electricity and 10 percent renewable gas to over 70,000 customers. The company says that even though costs are higher than buying energy directly from traditional sources, the markup shouldn’t be as high as it is with other utilities. Their simple process for those that want to switch utility companies also keeps cost down.

Thanks to automation, interested consumers can quickly get a quote and sign up. It could take as little as three minutes to complete. Wood adds to Business Insider that customers calling in don’t have to go through hoops to get service, and will speak with members that know their business inside and out. “That only gets more effective as you scale because it will mean that as we get more and more members, we'll be able to service them with a relatively smaller number of people compared to competitors."

That continues the narrative behind being more transparent with customers. Bulb could be merging with other smaller-scale electric companies to continue making an impact on the bigger players. They also have an interest in putting some of their profits toward green energy products. Similar to their views on electric companies that take advantage of people, they’ll be looking closely at these so they avoid shams and startups that just want to make a quick buck.

For those interested in making the switch, they’ll need to wait 21 days after registering. Any exit fees charged by prior utility companies will be credited on the bill for this time period. Bulb has cut their customers’ costs seven times since being founded, and twice over the past three months, according to their blog. At the moment, Bulb doesn’t have any announcement on moving into the United States, but we can definitely hope that companies here will follow in a similar suit.