The government-backed Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) is launching a £3 million study into householders’ use of heat and energy.
The study, which is part of the ETI’s £100 million Smart Systems and Heat (SSH) technology programme launched in April, will involve thousands of households to get an insight into consumer requirements for heat and energy.
The project leaders, environment consultant PRP and University College London’s Energy Institute, want to understand better how consumers’ demands for space heating and hot water can be best met.
Frontier Economics, The Technology Partnership and The Peabody Trust will assist with the project, while the actual interaction with consumers will be carried out by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) and Hitachi.
The findings from the study will be used in future design work carried out by the ETI to demonstrate a smart energy system.
“This research will ultimately help to identify trends in real mass-market consumer behaviour, requirements and profiles in order to help us in our goal to design and communicate an effective smart energy system design for the UK market,” says Rebecca Sweeney, ETI project manager.
A recent report from Citizens Advice indicated that over six million children in the UK currently live in households where the parents are worried about how to pay their next energy bill.
Meanwhile, a majority of those surveyed said they do not currently have the heating on as much as they would like and are even not heating certain rooms in a bid to cut energy costs.
For further information:
www.eti.co.uk
www.prp.uk.com/
www.ucl.ac.uk/energy
Related stories:
UK’s Citizens Advice urgers householders to switch to save (26-Oct)
UK consumer group Which? calls for energy price review (17-Oct)
UK government turns up the thermostat on renewable heating (21-Sept)
UK government defines new way to measure fuel poverty (19-Sept)
Article source: http://www.energyefficiencynews.com/i/5546/
