MRI eSight: Energy monitoring, tenant billing and carbon reporting for large estates

Overview

MRI eSight was built by eSight Energy, a Cambridge company incorporated in June 1998. German software investor BID Equity bought the group in April 2018, when eSight had offices in Cambridge, Chicago and Hong Kong and its software ran in 17 languages. MRI Software bought it in November 2021 and added it to its facilities and real estate management products. MRI is a property management software company based in Solon, Ohio.

MRI Software now sells it as MRI Energy. The eSight name survives on some regional MRI pages and in the government listing, and both names describe the same product.

The buyer is usually an energy manager, facilities director or sustainability lead with hundreds or thousands of meters to look after. MRI's own references run from a single stadium to a telecoms operator with 65,000 sites, and the July 2025 service definition claims more than 400,000 buildings monitored in over 60 countries by more than 33,000 users.

eSight sits in the monitoring and targeting tradition of UK energy management: it reads data from equipment other people make, it does not sell meters or control plant, and its strength is breadth of data collection and reporting across a large estate. It competes most directly with other portfolio energy platforms rather than with building automation or site control systems.

Offering

MRI Energy is sold as a web application in modules, so a customer buys the parts it needs. The April 2026 G-Cloud price list names Energy Analysis, Reporting, Alarms, Data Import, Calculated Meters, Utility Contracts, Project Tracking and Invoice Validation, and MRI's product pages describe the rest.

Data collection and data quality

Data collection brings in automatic meter reading feeds, BMS and historian data, IoT devices, spreadsheets, bills and production figures. MRI says it has built more than 200 data import integrations. A data quality toolkit finds gaps, spikes and meter rollovers and fills or corrects them in bulk while keeping the raw data unchanged. A mobile app records manual meter readings offline and uploads them when the phone reconnects.

Analysis, targets and alarms

Energy analysis covers baseload, surface plots of a single meter, KPI rankings across sites and departments, and virtual meters that aggregate others. Baselines can take up to 20 variables, such as production output, occupancy, time of year and temperature, and savings from projects can be checked with IPMVP methods. Anomaly detection is a rules engine: users layer thresholds and exceptions, and alarms go by email to assigned users depending on the site, day, time and severity.

Bills, tenants and carbon

Utility bill management compares supplier invoices with metered data and tracks budgets and contracts. Tenant billing produces invoices for electricity, gas, steam, chilled water and domestic water from submeters, handles part-month move-outs and late charges, and tracks what has been paid. Sustainability reporting covers electricity, gas, renewable generation, waste, recycling and business car mileage, with reports for the GHG Protocol, ISO 50001, Net Zero and LEED.

Other options

Dashboards, map navigation across sites, an Excel add-in for pulling data into spreadsheets, white-label branding, single sign-on and UK degree-day data are available, the last three as priced extras. Implementation is a consultant-led project with a survey pack, configuration, data validation and training before handover to support.

Technology

Deployment

MRI Energy is a browser application hosted by MRI. The G-Cloud listing describes a private cloud on VMware in a UK Tier 3 data centre, with a dedicated virtual image for each customer, and notes that data may also be processed in the EEA and elsewhere. Browsers supported are Edge, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera, and the interface scales to phones. Users choose an advanced or an express view of the same system.

Getting data in

The hosted system takes most data directly. The same listing names CSV, XML, oBIX, OPC, Modbus TCP/IP, MQTT, AMQP, HTTP POST and API calls as import methods, and the 2025 service definition adds API push and pull, OPC DA and HDA, FTP, SFTP, FTPS and email. Where equipment can only be reached on the customer's network, a locally installed service called MRI Energy iDC reads Modbus TCP/IP devices, OPC HDA servers and file folders and forwards the data to the hosted system.

The oBIX route has a long record. In 2012 eSight told Modern Building Services that customers were importing more than 20,000 separate oBIX feeds from Tridium Niagara stations every five minutes. The 2024 service definition shows named drivers for BMS vendors including Tridium, Johnson Controls, Siemens, Trend, Cylon and Automated Logic, the OSIsoft PI historian, data loggers from Schneider Electric, Obvius and Iskraemeco, meter makers and operators such as Kamstrup, Carlo Gavazzi, Socomec, IMServ and Stark, IoT sources such as Monnit and eGauge, and Urjanet for utility bill data.

Getting data out

Tables and reports export to CSV, Excel, PDF, HTML and XML. The API includes Basic web services that the G-Cloud listing says can use encrypted or unencrypted HTTP with plain-text authentication, alongside SOAP over HTTPS, federated and Windows-authenticated forms. Swagger documentation is available to customers; no public sandbox is offered.

Security

According to the G-Cloud listing, MRI declares ISO/IEC 27001 certification (accredited by Lloyd's Register Quality Assurance on 5 December 2018) and Cyber Essentials Plus for the service, and commissions external penetration tests at least once a year. The listing states TLS 1.2 or later for buyer-supplier and internal-network data transit, but also says Basic web services can use encrypted or unencrypted HTTP with plain-text authentication. It says Basic is intended for clients that cannot access the standard services, but does not explain whether Basic is enabled by default or how the two statements fit together. Access control is role-based down to field level, and support staff can hold UK security clearance up to Developed Vetting. Support response targets are three hours for serious issues and six for normal ones, with phone support during UK office hours.

Customers

MRI publishes several named references for the product, all with outcomes reported by MRI or the customer rather than audited.

Carlsberg UK, the UK's fourth-largest brewer with around 1,800 staff on 16 sites, uses it across breweries and distribution depots to measure gas, water and electricity against production and to raise email alarms. MRI reports a 10% cut in energy use, a 10% cut in water use and 16% lower effluent costs.

Texas Tech University switched the system on in July 2015 with a low-cost pilot on existing meters. MRI's case study credits it with a $220,000 finding in one building in the first year, more than $500,000 of corrections in the second, and over $2.5 million of savings since installation, with 49 buildings connected at the time and plans for 200.

Ricoh Arena in Coventry used it to find that lighting and air conditioning made up 73% of the venue's energy use; after equipment upgrades MRI reports 15% less electricity, 6% less gas and 13% less water in its 2024 service definition.

A multinational telecoms operator, not named, uses it to track energy at 65,000 sites after a 5G expansion. The system reads 185,000 data points every ten minutes, recharges tower tenants for fossil and renewable energy separately, and was rolled out in four months with 17 languages and single sign-on.

MRI also runs it in its own London office at 9 King Street, combined with occupancy sensors from MRI OnLocation, and reports more than $25,000 of operating savings in 12 months from closing quiet floors and changing cleaning and maintenance schedules.

On Capterra the product averages 4.7 out of 5 from 44 reviews. Reviewers praise the dashboards and support and mention the price, the learning curve and the time it takes to configure large numbers of meters.

Markets

The product's centre of gravity is the UK, where eSight was founded and where MRI sells it to public bodies through the government's G-Cloud 14 framework. Its references also reach the United States, through the former eSight office in Chicago and customers such as Texas Tech University, and Asia, where eSight had a Hong Kong office at the time of the 2018 buyout. MRI's figures put use in more than 60 countries.

Sectors named across the evidence include commercial property, higher education, food and drink manufacturing, venues and telecoms. Tenant billing and bill validation make it a natural fit for landlords and managing agents who recharge utilities. MRI placed it within its facilities and real estate management products after the acquisition, and pairs it with its MRI OnLocation occupancy sensors in its own office.

MRI's UK contact page gives 9 King Street in London as its main UK office, which is also the registered office of eSight Energy Limited, and lists a second office in Sleaford. Customers reach MRI's support through its UK helpdesk during office hours and through a customer support portal that requires a login.

Company

eSight Energy Limited was incorporated on 24 June 1998 as Hawkesbury Consulting Limited and took the eSight Energy name in January 2010. Its parent company is eSight Energy Group Limited, which was based in Cambridge.

BID Equity, a German investor in mid-sized software companies, bought 100% of eSight Energy Group with effect from 23 April 2018. Janie Jefferies-Freer was chief executive at the time; the long-serving directors, including Simon Durrant, stood down that day. BID Equity sold the business to MRI Software on 2 November 2021 for an undisclosed sum, when eSight reported more than 260,000 buildings monitored in 60 countries. MRI's current directors of eSight Energy Limited are Patrick Ghilani and John Ensign, both appointed in October 2021.

MRI Software is headquartered in Solon, Ohio, and had been in business for more than 50 years at the time of the acquisition. It is owned by private equity firms TA Associates, GI Partners and Harvest Partners together with its management; Harvest joined the other two in February 2020. MRI's leadership team is led by chief executive Patrick Ghilani, with Terry Keller as chief technology officer. In September 2025 Reuters reported that the owners were working with Goldman Sachs to explore a sale or stock market listing at a valuation of up to $10 billion including debt, with annual revenue approaching $1 billion.

Since the acquisition the product has been renamed MRI Energy on MRI's main site. MRI does not publish a separate headcount or revenue for the energy business.