As part of the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero Heat Pump Ready Programme, City Science were awarded funding to deliver our project: Advanced Modelling for Heat as a Service.
Overview
City Science was awarded funding by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) to deliver a research project as part of Stream 2 of the Heat Pump Ready Programme (HPRP). Our study aimed to address barriers to Heat as a Service (HaaS), through creating a financial analytics platform, which facilitates the transition of building portfolio managers and tenants into considering HaaS style contracts. HaaS is an approach to home heating where users can subscribe to a service that provides them with a consistent desired level of warmth with all heating system responsibilities transferred to a service provider.
Our study objectives were:
- To develop a platform that can delivery de-risked Heat as a Service style contracts
- To create a toolset which is attractive to building portfolio managers now, but offer clear paths to the adoption of Heat as a Service style contracts
- To evaluate our in-home monitoring solution across both technical requirements and user acceptability
Outcomes
Through our research, we established a clear path for how we could start to confidently recommend HaaS style contracts to both building portfolio managers and tenants. Our platform comprises two financial models, one for individual properties and the other for entire property portfolios.
- De-risked Heat as a Service: The model we developed provides a structured framework for portfolio managers and tenants to navigate a contractual agreement for an often-unfamiliar concept with minimised uncertainties. It employs a process to identify the current state of dwellings, estimate heat demand, provide retrofit pathways and utilise Smart Meter models to de-risk HaaS scenarios and cost projections.
- Building Portfolio Management: Our building portfolio financial model provides managers with comprehensive insights into their properties’ financial landscapes, and when integrated into a portfolio managers report, it delivers an extensive overview of their current properties, future projects and potential HaaS contracts. Our toolset also offers dynamic portfolio management through Cadence 360 which allows portfolio managers to visualise property distribution and characteristics across geographic locations.
- User Acceptability: We also identified key barriers that hinder the widespread adoption of HaaS contracts, such as discovering that many potential consumers were apprehensive about monitoring equipment being installed in their home for a range of reasons. This understanding emerged from extensive user research which involved surveys distributed to the general public and study participants. Notably, our research highlighted data privacy and security concerns as a key obstacle to the uptake of in-home monitoring technology. These findings informed our understanding of scalability barriers in heat as a service and guided the development of participant onboarding strategies for future monitoring projects.
Next steps
Looking ahead, we are actively testing our platform in new projects which will also include recruiting further local authorities and social housing providers to test our tool on and to obtain further feedback on our building portfolio management platform.