ETI appoints Cambridge Consultants to lead a project to develop an advanced Home Energy Management System

28th October 2015

• The ETI will invest £4.9million in the two-year project within its Smart Systems and Heat Programme
• The project aims to accelerate the development of a consumer-orientated Home Energy Management System product with mass market appeal
• Testing in homes to start in the winter of 2016/17

The Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) has appointed product design and development firm Cambridge Consultants to lead its Home Energy Management System (HEMS) project. This £4.9million project aims to accelerate the development of an advanced customer-orientated HEMS which has mass market appeal.

Current HEMS (incorporating smart meters) can be installed in homes to monitor energy usage with recommendations on how to reduce energy wastage and therefore cost to a consumer. This project aims to develop more than just heating control functionality by developing an energy management system for a building that is not simply an automation of existing controls but informs and enhances peoples heat experiences. This is not just through cost savings alone.

ETI’s research highlights that HEMS should be a key component of a future smart energy system, but given the fact that most consumers do not willingly engage with their energy system any product solutions need to be consumer focused if they are to be effective. Therefore this project to design an advanced HEMS is a core component of the ETI’s Smart Systems and Heat programme to make energy and heat consumption more consumer focused.

As part of the two year project, the system that is developed will be installed and tested in homes during the winter of 2016/17 and the results analysed to give an insight into consumer patterns, their electricity and gas use and the building and heating system performance. This will provide a significant dataset of consumer behaviours, energy use and building characterisation to develop further future products. Providing a secure and scalable platform will also help to integrate more appliances in the home and allow valuable services and applications to be developed, deployed and managed.

ETI Project Manager, Smart Systems and Heat,  Donna Gandy-Wright said:

“Decarbonising heat in our homes is important if we are to meet the UK’s legally binding 2050 climate change targets as around 20% of the nation’s carbon emissions are generated by domestic heating and around 90% of the 26million homes around today are expected to be still in use in 2050 but today fewer than 4% of homes have low carbon heating and 90% prefer gas central heating given the choice. Our research shows that few people care enough to change how they heat their homes simply because of emissions. Consumers want to optimise their heating systems before replacing them. Households have different priorities and people want better control of the time, effort and money they spend on their home – they don’t simply want to minimise their running costs. The HEMS project is designed to provide consumers with a range of solutions that provides better control of how they use energy in their homes as well as providing industry compelling propositions and business models for the future. We chose Cambridge Consultants to lead this project as it has all the necessary skills – from user experience and web designers to radio engineers and mathematicians. It also brings a valuable fresh perspective to the issue.”

Tim Ensor, Head of Connected Devices at Cambridge Consultants, said:

"Our track record of delivering breakthrough innovation – combined with the ETI’s insight into the UK energy market – makes for an exciting partnership that has the potential to transform the way we manage our home heating. Enabling people to move towards low-carbon heating sources means we have to be much smarter about how we deliver and store heat in our homes, and about how we communicate with consumers about their heating options. Doing this requires a technically very complex system of connected devices to engage consumers with their home heating in an easy-to-understand way. We’re delighted to be working with the ETI to make this vision a reality.”

The ETI’s report “Decarbonising Heat for UK Homes” identifies two main potential pathways towards cutting carbon emissions from the 26 million homes needing low carbon installations by 2050 – local area schemes delivering low carbon heat through heat networks, along with individual home systems using electricity for heating.

Information on the Decarbonising Heat analysis including the report, video and an infographic can be found here.