Working at scale: the UK’s largest retrofit heating project

Wheatley Homes Glasgow, part of the Wheatley Group, is Scotland’s largest social landlord managing almost 43,000 affordable homes in Glasgow. Of these homes, around 10,000 are in multi-dwelling units (MDU) such as high-rise and medium-rise apartment blocks.

The Challenge

• The tenant heating experience was being too hot in the morning and, on cooler days, too cold in the late afternoon and evening.
• To maintain comfort, tenants used supplementary electric heating, extra layers of clothing, hot water bottles, or simply went to bed early.
• Tenants, a proportion of whom are fuel poor, had high energy bills.

The Solution

• A major tenant engagement programme resulted in 8,000 flats being fitted with HeatSage smart controls. HeatSage enables electric storage heaters to be dynamically charged
• Many tenants chose to switch to an Economy 10-type tariff that provided three charging windows, including an afternoon charge.
• Vast improvement in tenant heating experience and a reduction in energy usage by around 30%.
• Landlord avoided the unnecessary replacement of some 40,000 functional storage heaters at a cost of around £6,000 per flat.

Quote

‘Our job was to explain, educate and reassure tenants. This became progressively easier once the project was up and running and a buzz was created about how much better the heating was, and how little disruption there was during installation.’

David Stern (Connected Response), working with Wheatley Homes

You can download a PDF of the Wheatley Homes Glasgow case study below: