New LV budget estimating tool
We engaged with stakeholders to develop and deploy our new LV self-serve budget estimating tool which we called AutoDesign.
We know that many of our customers want to perform their own upfront assessments and so at the start of this year, we added to the suite of online tools we make available to help customers assess the likely cost, timescales and viability of their connection with the launch of AutoDesign, our new LV budget estimating tool.
AutoDesign can provide customers with an indicative cost for their new LV connection in minutes. It guides them to the most viable and cost-effective connection solution, using a simple green, amber, red (yes, probably, no) indicator and allows them to generate a free of charge budget estimate in minutes.
During the course of the year, we engaged with stakeholders - in particular Local Authorities and their consultants - to develop AutoDesign. Stakeholders were invited to take part in workshops and user acceptance testing and gave feedback that helped to shape the tool’s development and functionality.
We gave demonstrations at our Connections Customer Forums and ICP Seminars, at our Stakeholder Summit and at the Low Carbon Network and Innovation Conference.
In January 2020, we launched AutoDesign at our Local Authority forum and 29 local government stakeholders representing 15 Local Authorities in our region took part.
Those attending were invited to bring along details of any new LV connections they were considering and use AutoDesign to design live projects, with support from with our engineers, during our first ever
co-working session.
AutoDesign, which has already been nominated for two industry awards, will be particularly useful in accelerating the uptake of EVs in our region by helping customers to identify the most cost-effective locations to install new charging infrastructure. The response from stakeholders has been extremely positive and we have already seen 136 customers register to take advantage of the benefits AutoDesign offers.
- To start using AutoDesign visit /get-connected/autodesign
