Small businesses look set to cut costs and energy consumption by up to half thanks to a pilot project Leicester's De Montfort University (DMU) has been involved with.

New gas, water and electricity meter reading equipment trialled in 32 small and medium enterprises showed as much as a 30 to 50 per cent reduction in consumption, simply by taking data every half hour and making small changes on the back of the findings. Widespread use of the intelligent metering system would not only cut costs and usage, but reduce the environmental impact of harmful greenhouse gas emissions.

DMU, Leicester City Council and nine European partners from five countries are involved in the European Community-supported aIM 4 SME's (Automatic Intelligent Metering for Small and Medium-sized Businesses) two-year project.

The scheme has helped a number of the city's businesses shrink their energy and water costs because of the new found knowledge of when consumption typically peaks.

Barney Sturgess, Managing Director for Sturgess Cars in Leicester, said: "What gets monitored can get managed - that is the greatest benefit of the technology provided by the project.

"We have managed to reduce our energy consumption through a programme of efficiency savings including measures as simple as the use of a plug in socket timers, as well as through more substantial investments such as a new air conditioning plant."

He added that he had confidence that any problems with utility usage would be quickly picked up in hours rather than days or weeks.

Mike Bartoszewicz from Leicester's Ramon Hygiene Ltd, said: "Energy Management/Leicester Energy Agency have provided an excellent service and their metering has proved to be very useful in monitoring energy waste."

Across several of the companies, energy and water had typically been used unnecessarily, but the intelligent metering allowed for a greater level of usage detail than with traditional monthly billing.

DMU's Professor Paul Fleming, said: "Without the detailed half hourly energy and water data, businesses didn't realise how much they were consuming at night or weekends.

"Businesses were almost immediately able to see the effect of changing heating controls and could detect if they had a gas leak."

The monitoring systems within the 32 businesses were connected to two central databases hosted each by DMU and the City Council. From the data, water leaks and energy waste were identified, energy consumption patterns were brought into line with the times buildings were being used and light and heating systems were switched off out of working hours and at weekends.

Not only that, it became easy to spot poor air conditioning units, timer controls for heating and lighting could be adjusted to best fit and temperature controls on heating systems were installed.