Connected Response is working with Glasgow Housing Association (GHA), part of Wheatley Group, to improve the heating and hot water experience of residents in its Cartcraigs flats.
Connected Response is installing its HeatSage technology in each flat. HeatSage is a unique solution that enables electric storage heaters to be charged in line with each resident’s heating preferences. An intelligent add-on device monitors the current temperature in the living room and uses the next day’s weather forecast to ensure an optimum level of heating is achieved.
Cartcraigs is a 17-storey tower block which sits near to Pollok Country Park in the southwest of Glasgow. Approved for construction in 1968, Cartcraigs contains 134 apartments; heating is provided by electric storage heaters.
Electric storage heaters have traditionally been charged overnight using Economy 7 type tariffs, introduced to help balance the grid’s electricity load with the advent of nuclear power stations. This typically led to homes being too hot in the morning – with windows being opened to reduce the temperature, and too cold in the evening – with supplementary heating (e.g. electric fires, oil-filled radiators) being used to top up the heating at great cost to the resident. Connected Response’s HeatSage technology will ensure residents are warm when they want to be warm: morning, noon, and night.
Central to a successful roll-out of the HeatSage technology is resident engagement. Connected Response is managing the resident engagement programme, working very closely with the GHA team and fuel advisors, to explain how the system works and support people through the upgrade. Installation of HeatSage takes about an hour in each flat. Connected Response is also working with energy suppliers to ensure a smooth switch for residents to tariffs which allows for three charging windows across the day.
Cartcraigs is just ten miles north of the UK’s largest onshore wind farm, Whitelee. At times when demand for electricity is low, at night for example, wind farms may receive payments to curtail output. These curtailments form part of the electricity system’s balancing mechanism.
Instead of paying to ‘switch off’ wind energy, Connected Response’s HeatSage technology could be used to ‘distribute’ the electricity to the electric storage heaters of Cartcraigs’ residents – or any other electric storage heater controlled by HeatSage technology. Storage heating households are far more likely to be in fuel poverty compared to other households, due to the historic bad charging times and tariffs. Consequently, distributing what is effectively ‘cheap’ electricity in this way would deliver enormous social benefits. This concept was part of the recent 4D report by NG-ESO, SSEN and other leading industry players*.
The roll-out of HeatSage at Cartcraigs was delayed by the onset of Covid-19. The fact that the project is now up and running is a welcome sign that a degree of normality is returning to the Dear Green Place.
*4D Heat: using domestic heat to address wind constraints (20/10/20).