Smart Monitoring & Software


Smart Monitoring & Software Feature


be delivered at both macro and micro levels. Tis means we can use technology to help individuals living in homes as well as housing providers, their teams and indeed even their funders and insurers. Firstly, how do we even know if a household is in fuel poverty, especially if, as


we see regularly, people are not willing to come forward to say they are living in fuel poverty? At the most basic level we can remotely use temperature sensors to show that a home is constantly at a low temperature. An interaction with the tenant can be arranged and an intervention managed such as the provision of a fuel voucher. We see this all the time and not just through the winter. Any home sitting at C generally is not a pleasant place to be and this can easily happen in a UK summer. It’s not unusual in a UK winter to see sub 6o


sub 16o C in many homes that


are monitored. At a more in depth level, by installing sensors that track energy consumption,


heating system performance and building comfort, homeowners and building managers can get a better understanding of how much energy is being used, when it is being used, what it is being used for and where it is being wasted. Tis information can then be used to identify ways to reduce energy consumption and save money on energy bills. At the next information level up, quite oſten a property is highly inefficient


at retaining heat so the decision may be taken to carry out a retrofit on that property. When you carry out this work, there are several parties who want to know that the work has actually made a difference. Tose that pay for it (or even insure it), those that benefit from it, and those that regulate it. By using sensors, we can quantitatively prove investment has been worth it on a specific property – or not. At the macro level the biggest challenge is to reduce the cost to heat a home


in the first place. When you see information such as that recently published by Birmingham City Council – that their current budget for retrofit leaves them with a £3.5bn shortfall to retrofit all their properties – you really understand the scale of the challenge. Tis is not an area where decisions can be made based on anecdotal evidence. We are led to believe this happens more oſten than not.


34 | HMMJune/July 2023 | www.housingmmonline.co.uk


At the macro level the biggest challenge is to reduce the cost to heat a home in the first place


IoT systems can give you direct evidence of where to spend your money, what to spend it on, and when.


A PERFECT EXAMPLE Four tower blocks that all had the same work carried out – in theory – were monitored. However, the findings showed that one of the four tower blocks was showing a 10% higher humidity than the other three. It turns out the contractor had used a different type of insulation for this block, which may have been cheaper in the short term but in the long term was just storing up mould and damp issues. Tat cladding type was subsequently taken off the shopping list. Te same project also allowed the local authority to evidence that spending an extra 5% of budget on ventilation would save them approximately five times their spend that a year in maintenance costs. Tese are just some very simple examples of how data can be used to tackle


issues in a home or in a whole stock. While fuel poverty is clearly a very pressing issue, from a purely commercial point of view it’s very hard to justify the spend on IoT on this alone. However there are so many more use cases that stack up across a whole organisation including maintenance, tenant management, revenue protection through to informing C-suite strategies and reporting. We all want to help those in fuel poverty, and the solutions can have huge


impacts beyond the initial use case. Sensors installed to identify fuel poverty can be used in a huge number of other ways. Energy efficiency measures installed to help reduce bills can generate jobs and also have a positive impact on climate change. It’s a win-win!


Dane Ralston is director at iOpt Ltd


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36