Privacy Notice
Last Updated: 18 January 2024
Table of Contents
1. Important information and who we are
1.2 This Privacy Notice primarily relates to your personal data that is collected, processed, stored or otherwise used by us as a data controller, for example, in respect of personal data collected via your use of our website. We are registered as a data controller with the Data Protection Commission.
1.3 There are certain occasions where we do not act as a data controller and are instead a data processor, please see paragraph 2 for more information.
1.4 It is important that you read this Privacy Notice together with any other fair processing policy we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This Privacy Notice supplements other notices and privacy policies and is not intended to override them.
1.5 If you have any questions about this Privacy Notice or our use of your information you can contact us at privacy@openvolt.com. You also have the right to make a complaint to the relevant Supervisory Authority about our use of your information.
1.6 This Privacy Notice may change from time to time and, if it does, the up-to-date version will always be available on our website.
1.7 Openvolt may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.
2. Openvolt as a data processor
2.1 As noted above, this Privacy Notice primarily relates to your personal data that is collected, processed, stored or otherwise used by us as a data controller, for example, in respect of personal data collected via your use of our website.
2.2 However, we also act as a data processor for the purposes of the services we provide to our customers.
2.3 We process certain personal data in relation to such services, but only do so on the instructions of our customers (the “data controllers” in relation to this service).
As we are a data processor in this respect, this privacy notice does not explain in detail how this data will be used, stored or otherwise processed. For full information, you should review the relevant data controller’s privacy notice.
However, please note the following relevant information:
(a) to provide services to our customers, we will receive (and provide to our customers) your smart energy data from third parties, which may include personal data, however such smart energy data will only be provided to our customers where you have consented to this via our hosted consent management platform or previously provided consent to our customers which in turn they have provided to us. We will use your email address to send an email with instructions on how to withdraw your consent;
(b) in accordance with 3.3(a), on some occasions you will also be asked to upload certain evidence to demonstrate you are entitled to provide consent for us to access your smart meter data (such as a utility bill and credit/debit card details);
(c) where required by the applicable regulation, we will also validate whether you live at the address for the smart meter by contacting your bank, to do this we will use Stripe (the payments platform);
(d) to audit our processes, our data providers may require us to provide the evidence we have collected to demonstrate we have received legitimate consent from you to access your smart meter;
(e) we may store your personal data outside the European Economic Area (EEA) as agreed with the data controller;
(f) in some circumstances Openvolt will anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes or to train certain AI models, in which case Openvolt may use this anonymised information indefinitely without further notice to you;
(g) if our customer ceases to use our services, we may continue to store your personal data for 90 business days after our customer has stopped using our services, should such customer wish to re-engage with us during this period, after which this data shall be deleted. When we are holding the data during such interim period, our lawful basis for doing so is for our legitimate interests of ensuring a smooth re-onboarding process if our customer wishes to purchase further services.
3. The data we may collect about you
3.1 We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together as follows:
(a) Information you give to us. You may give us information about you by:
(i) communicating with us about our services; or
(ii)contacting us.
The information you give to us may include your name and your contact details, such as email address and phone number (or business email address and business phone number).
(b) Information we collect about you. Each time you visit our website, we may automatically collect the following information:
(i) web usage information (e.g. IP address), your login information, browser type and version, time zone setting, operating system and platform; and
(ii) information about your visit, including the URL clickstream to, through and from our website (including date and time); time on page, page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks and mouse-overs).
(c) Information we receive from other sources. We may receive information about you from third parties, including technical data from analytics providers or from our third party suppliers (e.g. advertising agencies).
3.2 We also collect, use and share Aggregated Data such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose. Aggregated Data could be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law as this data will not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate your Usage Data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific website feature. However, if we combine or connect Aggregated Data with your personal data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as personal data which will be used in accordance with this Privacy Notice.
3.3 We do not collect any Special Categories of Personal Data about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health, and genetic and biometric data). Nor do we collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.
4. Use of cookies
4.1 Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users, to improve your experience on our website. You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly. For more information, please view our Cookies Policy at https://www.openvolt.com/cookies-policy.
5. How we use your personal data
5.1 We have set out below, in a table format, a description of all the ways we plan to use your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are where appropriate and the applicable retention period.
Purpose/Activity
Type of data
Lawful basis for processing including basis of legitimate interest
Retention period
To communicate with you regarding our services (including managing payments and collecting money owed to us).
Name and contact information of the applicable customer representative (such as business email address and phone number).
Our legitimate interests of providing our services to our customers and recovering money owed to us.
We will store this personal data for the period which we provide services to the Customer and for 5 years after we cease to provide services to that customer.
To notify you about changes to our terms or Privacy Notice
Name and email address
Necessary to comply with a legal obligation
We will store your name and email address for 10 years.
To administer and protect our business, our website and hosted consent management platform (such as troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data)
To the extent necessary, name, IP address and email address
Necessary for our legitimate interests (for running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and in the context of a business reorganisation or group restructuring exercise)
Necessary to comply with a legal obligation to report personal data breaches to the relevant supervisory authority.
We will store this personal data for 10 years.
To market our services to you.
Name and email address.
To the extent applicable, we may also use your past purchasing history.
Necessary for our legitimate interests to grow our business.
We will store this data for a period of 10 years.
To the extent you are a representative of a past customer, we will store this data for a period of 5 years after termination or expiry of our contract with the relevant customer.
To use data analytics to improve our website and hosted consent management platform, marketing, customer relationships and experiences
IP address and data relating to how you use our website/ hosted consent management platform.
Necessary for our legitimate interests (to define types of customers for our products and services, to keep our website and hosted consent management platform updated and relevant, to develop our business and to inform our marketing strategy)
We will store this personal data for 5 years..
To validate your address for the purposes of complying with the Smart Energy Code or other legislation governing smart meter data access
Utility Bill, credit card details or unique meter numbers
Necessary to comply with a legal obligation
We will store this data as long as required to make it available to the appropriate authorities for audit purposes.
5.2 Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the relevant rules, where this is required or permitted by law.
6. Marketing
6.1 You will see in the table above, that we will use your personal data to market our services to you.
6.2 Generally, we do not rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your personal data although we will get your consent before sending third party direct marketing communications to you. You have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by contacting us.
7. Disclosures of your personal data
7.1 We may share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in the table in paragraph 5 above:
(a) Service providers based who provide IT and system administration services.
(b) Professional advisers including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers based in who provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance and accounting services.
(c) Government agencies, regulatory bodies, and other authorities acting as processors or joint controllers based in the relevant jurisdiction, who may require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances.
(d) Third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this Privacy Notice.
8. International transfers
8.1 We may transfer your personal data outside of the European Economic Area (EEA).
8.2 Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the EEA, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:
(a) We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data.
(b) Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts which give personal data the same protection it has in the EEA.
8.3 Please contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the EEA.
9. Data security
9.1 We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
9.2 We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.
10. Data storage
10.1 We will only store your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements. We may store your personal data for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.
10.2 To determine the appropriate storage period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.
10.3 Details of storage periods for different aspects of your personal data are set out in the table above.
10.4 In some circumstances we will anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes, in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.
11. Your legal rights
11.1 Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. You have the right to:
(a) Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a "data subject access request"). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
(b) Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
(c) Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
(d) Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.
(e) Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios:
(i) if you want us to establish the data's accuracy;
(ii) where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it;
(iii) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims;
(iv) you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it;
(f) Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
(g) Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent and will not affect any other lawful grounds by which we may continue processing personal data once consent has been withdrawn.
11.2 Even if you have accepted the processing of your personal data for marketing purposes (by ticking the relevant box), you have the right to ask us to stop processing your personal data for such purposes. You can exercise this right at any time by contacting us at privacy@openvolt.com.
11.3 You can exercise these rights by contacting us at privacy@openvolt.com
11.4 You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we could refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.
11.5 We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.
11.6 We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it could take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or if you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.
