WE BUILD AND TEST IDEAS FOR

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?

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.

Back in 2014 we were early on our journey to find out how to decarbonise heating. Businesses were starting to launch smarter heating controls. We wanted to find out how people used them.

Want to understand how different EV users charge their vehicles?
We have created five personas based on want consumers want from electric vehicle charging and demand-side response.

If we want consumers to take up new energy services they must first understand them. We looked into deciphering the language around Demand Side Response (DSR) with our Home Truths® panel.

60,000 electric vehicles were bought in UK last year. We interviewed electric car drivers to see what they thought about letting energy suppliers control their charging.

Millions of households live with illnesses made worse by the cold. What if you could prescribe a warm home to them? We thought we’d try this out by prototyping a smart energy service for households suffering from a cold-related chronic illness.

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

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.

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?