Axle Energy Privacy Policy

Introduction

Axle Energy respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy policy will inform you as to how we look after your personal data and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you. Please read this privacy policy carefully.

1. Important Information and Who We Are

About us

Axle Energy Limited is registered in England under company number 14633671 ("Axle Energy", "we", "us", or "our"). We provide software that allow us to control home energy devices to shift energy consumption to cheaper and greener periods within the constraints of the grid and your personal preferences (our "Service") to home energy asset owners, manufacturers, service providers and end-users (collectively known as "Users", "you" or "your"). We process information on home energy behaviour. We use this information to provide services and enable home energy device monitoring to end-users and related service providers, such as energy suppliers.

Purpose of this privacy policy

This privacy policy aims to give you information on how Axle Energy and our partners collect and process your personal data through your use of a mobile application, website, platform, API, and/or mobile application (collectively, the "Software"), including any data you may provide for and during our Service.

Our Software is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children.

It is important that you read this privacy policy together with any other privacy policy or 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 policy supplements other notices and privacy policies and is not intended to override them.

Controller

Axle Energy is the controller and responsible for your personal data. This means that we determine the purposes for which, and the manner in which, your data is processed.

Changes to the privacy policy and your duty to inform us of changes

We keep our privacy policy under regular review. It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.

Third-party links

This Service 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 are not responsible for their practices, content, or privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit.

2. The Data We Collect About You

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data). The personal information that we collect enables us to:

1. deliver and improve the Service;
2. support you to use the Service; and
3. work with your energy company, OEM, TSO, DSO or other relevant party to deliver the Service.

We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together as follows:

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 policy.

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.

If you fail to provide personal data

Where we need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you, and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you (for example, to provide you with goods or services). In this case, we may have to cancel the Service you have with us but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.

3. How Is Your Personal Data Collected?

Before using the Service, we will ask for your consent to capture, process and share your information. We only collect the personal data required to enable us to deliver and support our Service to you.

We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:

4. How We Use Your Personal Data

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

• Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law). You can obtain further information about how we assess our legitimate interests against any potential impact on you in respect of specific activities by contacting us.
• Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you.
• Where we need to comply with a legal obligation.

We do not use your data for any automated decision-making or profiling.

Purposes for which we will use your personal data

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.

Note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please contact us if you need details about the specific legal ground we are relying on to process your personal data where more than one ground has been set out in the table below.

Marketing

We strive to provide you with choices regarding certain personal data uses, particularly around marketing and advertising.

Promotional offers from us

We may use your Identity, Contact, Technical, Usage and Profile Data to form a view on what we think you may want or need, or what may be of interest to you. This is how we decide which products, services and offers may be relevant for you (we call this marketing).

You will receive marketing communications from us if you have requested information from us or subscribed to our Services from us and you have not opted out of receiving that marketing.

Third-party marketing

We will get your express opt-in consent before we share your personal data with any third party for marketing purposes.

Opting out

You can ask us or third parties to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by contacting us at any time.

Where you opt out of receiving these marketing messages, this will not apply to personal data provided to us as a result of a product/service purchase, product/service experience or other transactions.

Cookies

Cookies are small parts of data that are not used for identification purposes but that learn about your usage and browsing behaviour based on how you interact with 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 the website may become inaccessible or not function properly. For more information about the cookies we use, please see our cookie policy.

Change of purpose

We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us.

If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

5. Disclosure of Your Personal Data

The information that we request will be used and retained by us and only shared with third parties where it is necessary to provide the service to you, and then only as described in this privacy policy.

All third-parties will undergo a due-diligence assessment and a written agreement with specific terms around data security and privacy is in place.

We may share your personal data with the reasons and parties set out below:

Providing our Service

Axle Energy uses selected third parties such as service providers, professional advisors, and authorities. We may share your personal information with them to allow us to provide and improve our Service.

We may share anonymised data with third parties such as energy companies and distribution system operators. The information transmitted is anonymised, which means no personal information about you is provided and location data is obfuscated to a larger area (such as a neighbourhood, or a position to within 100m to suitably ensure anonymity). Consequently, a third-party will not be able to identify you from any data shared directly from us.

Legal reasons

We may share personal data where we have a legal obligation to do so; for example when directed by a court, or if requested with an appropriate warrant by law enforcement or tax agencies. We may also share information without your permission where a person's life is in danger and to instigate or defend a legal claim, for example, with a solicitor, our professional advisors, or a court.

Supporting our Users

If you require support from us, we may share your personal data with suppliers and subcontractors to help resolve this issue. The data will include the nature of the query and any data supporting that, which may include Identity and Contact Data, Technical Data, Hardware Data as defined in Section 3. We will only share the information where it is necessary to allow us to be able to provide those products and services to you.

Providing enhanced services and rewards

We may offer you enhanced services and rewards, which may be delivered in partnership with third-party providers.

To confirm eligibility for these services, we may share Energy Data and Contact Data about you with these third-party energy companies:

• Electricity network companies, who deliver the electricity network in your local area;
• Electricity market operators who help balance the grid on behalf of energy generators, network companies and consumers; and
• Energy service providers who provide aggregation or access services to energy markets.

We may also share your email address and contact details to enable us to deliver an enhanced service and/or reward to you.

You can opt-out of any of these enhanced services at any time.

Business transfer

We may disclose your information to 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 policy.

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

Other reasons

We may share limited personal information with third parties if we determine, following an assessment, that the sharing is necessary in order to meet our legitimate interests, or promotes your interest and does not breach data protection laws.

We may also share your contact details with third parties for marketing purposes if you have given consent for this via your account or another method; and we may share your details with third parties if this is necessary to fulfil a contract with you.

There may be occasions when a third party who has not agreed to our terms of use or privacy policy will interact with our Software. It is the responsibility of the account holder on our Software to ensure that third-parties are made aware of the integration prior to interacting with the Service.

6. International Transfers

Our external third parties are based across Europe so their processing of your personal data may involve a transfer of data between the countries.

This privacy policy is governed by the UK and EU GDPR but we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to the transfer of your personal data by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:

• We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data.
• Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts approved for use in the relevant country which give personal data the same protection it has in the UK and EU.

Please contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data.

7. Data Security

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.

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.

We will take appropriate technical and organisational precautions to secure your personal data and to prevent the loss, misuse or alteration of your personal data.

To help protect your account and personal information, you should ensure that your password is not susceptible to being guessed, whether by a person or a computer program. You are responsible for keeping the password you use for accessing our Software confidential, and we will not ask you for your password (except when you log in to our platform).

We won't ask you to share sensitive information, such as bank details, for the purpose of verifying your identity. If anyone purporting to be us does ask for sensitive information, then please contact us using the details provided below.

8. Data Retention

How long will you use my personal data for?

We will only retain 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 retain 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. Occasionally, there will be ad-hoc consideration to delete data we no longer require.

To determine the appropriate retention 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.

Users can initiate account deletion, i.e. exercising their right to erasure, by contacting us. There may be circumstances in which we cannot delete some personal data where we have a legal requirement to retain it, such as participation in a Grid Support project. If you have any questions or want to know more about the data we are unable to delete, feel free to contact us using the details provided below.

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.

9. Your Legal Rights

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. You have the right to:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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:
   • If you want us to establish the data's accuracy.
   • Where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it.
   • 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.
   • You have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
6. 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.
7. 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. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us.

No fee usually required

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.

What we may need from you

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.

Time limit to respond

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 you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

10. Job Applicants' Privacy

Information we collect about you

In order to process your application, we ask you to provide certain personal data, also referred to as personally identifiable information (PII). The legal basis for processing your PII is by consent and therefore providing it is voluntary, however, some are required for us to properly consider your application. If you were not successful in your application, we will keep a copy of it for a period of 6 months from the closing date of the role you have applied for.

We may collect, store, and use the following categories of information about you during the application phase:

• Personally Identifiable Information: We collect your personal contact details such as name, address, email address and telephone number. We also collect contact information for your references; it is your responsibility to obtain consent from your references before providing their personal information to us.
• Sensitive Data: We ask you not to disclose any sensitive personal data during the application phase as we do not feel this required.
• Internet or Other Electronic Network Activity Information: Our website uses cookies - see Section 5.

Application sub-processors

We may use third party service providers to assist with our application procedure and only share data where appropriate measures are in place to protect the security of your data.

11. User Research

We undertake regular user research in order to guide the development of our Service. The data collected will only be used for research purposes and never sold to third parties. We record the user interviews to enable post-review, however these are deleted as soon as they are no longer relevant or after a period of three years (whichever is soonest). If we transcribe your interview, then we will retain this following the expiry of three years, however we will anonymise all personally identifiable information. We will, at all times, keep research source materials secure.

12. Contact Us

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or our privacy practices, please contact us in the following ways:

If you have a complaint, please contact us by email with the nature of your complaint. We'll acknowledge receipt within 5 working days, and issue a proposed resolution as quickly as we can. For any urgent matters, please include "urgent complaint" in the email subject line.

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK regulator for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk), and to escalate complaints if you're unsatisfied with our proposed resolution. The data protection authorities in the European Union are here. For countries that are not compliant with the UK or EU GDPR, you may contact the relevant authority in your country.

We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach any relevant authority so please start by contacting us.