WE BUILD AND TEST IDEAS FOR

Back when smart heating controls first came to market government wanted see how easy they were to use to inform their policies.

To get the best out of a heat pump, you need to drive a little different. We built a concept UI that gives real users the kindest heat pump experience.

We use 80% of our energy at home for heating and hot water. This produces 20% of our carbon emissions. We need to give people the heat they want without the carbon. So, back in 2013, we built a team of leading academics and consultants to understand how people use heat at home.

We hear more and more about electric vehicles every day. We see charging points for them at supermarkets and motorway services. But how do people really feel about EVs?

As renewable energy generation grows, matching available electricity supply to consumers’ demands gets harder.
We looked at how Electric vehicles could help to balance the grid by testing DSR with domestic EV users. Can this fit into people’s lives? Or will they reject it if it takes away their control?

When it comes to heating, people care more about their experience than how it’s delivered. They want to control how much they spend on their comfort, but don’t know how. If they could buy their Heating as a Service, then they choose how much to spend on their plan.

People often find their heating controls confusing and hard to use. Most put up with problems like drafts or damp. We knew people liked better control. BEIS wanted to find out how they actually used it, so we used our Living Lab of 100 homes to find out.

It’s hard to relate the things we do at home to the energy we use. So we use models to relate behaviour to energy.

We collaborated with Bristol Energy to launch the UK’s first ever Heat Plan. Heat Plans allow people to pay for heating in ‘Warm Hours’ instead of traditional kilowatt hours.

We collaborated with Ofgem to think about the future of energy and what policy change could look like.