Opportunity for social housing providers to join innovative, energy-saving, hot water project.
Demand Side Response (DSR) is a mechanism that can be used to integrate the increasing availability of renewable energy into our everyday consumption, and reduce our energy costs.
The USER Project is exploring how hot water cylinders can be used to enable all homes to offer the DSR service.
Ecuity is recruiting social housing providers to be part of a trial in 200 social housing homes (Sept 2020 – March 2021) to pilot an innovative AI-led DSR technology, developed by Levelise and Baxi Heating.
The technology itself is a shoe box-sized Smart Hub that plugs into hot water storage cylinders and enables their electrical immersion heater to heat water at times when the grid pays for DSR to balance energy supply and demand. It learns the hot water consumption patterns of tenants and matches this up with the conditions of the wider energy system.
This means that water can be heated when it is most cost-effective, to be used later in the day when it’s needed. The trial is funded through BEIS’ domestic DSR competition, meaning that all costs are covered by the project. The USER consortium is a group of companies involved in the low carbon space, including: Ecuity Consulting, Energy Systems Catapult (ESC); Durham University; Baxi Heating and Levelise Limited. Alex Taylor, Ecuity’s energy consultant tells us “This is a really exciting opportunity to be involved in an innovative, Government-funded, energy saving, hot water project in social housing.”
If you’re interested in being a part of the trial or want to know more, please contact: alex.taylor@ecuity.com by 22 May 2020
