Improving the Use of Energy in Buildings

This will require a significant change to our current national electricity grid and the way that we as consumers will interact with the grid:


With our experience of running projects to understand how people and new technologies can interact to deliver the greatest energy savings NEF is ideally placed to work with Distributed Network Operators, Energy Supply Companies and new technology providers to pilots and implement new Smart Grid approaches.  A few of our current projects are illustrated below.  Contact us (matt.cotton@nef.org.uk) if you would like to discuss how NEF can be of service in being the independent intermediary recruiting domestic and non-domestic customers to participate in trials and running the customer-facing elements of your programmes.

Smart Hooky (Western Power Distribution)

This is a new and innovative project in partnership with the community social enterprise Hook Norton Low Carbon Limited and Western Power Distribution the local network operator.  We are investigating how the peak of electricity consumption between 6.30-9.30pm can be smoothed out through incentives and provision of near-real time electricity data for an individual household compared to similar homes in their own community (anonymised). People will be able to view their data on a web portal and compare it with the highest, lowest and average usage across the village for similar types of properties and number of people in the house.

Project Website: Smart Hooky

Falcon (Western Power Distribution)

Project FALCON (Flexible Approaches for Low Carbon Optimised Networks) will test six alternatives to reinforcement of the existing Grid, to see how they work in practice. It also looks to analyse their effectiveness in different situations, modelling their impact over many years. Ultimately FALCON will provide guidance so that network planners can select the best technique from a range of options. Four of these options are based around novel engineering approaches and two are based around changing energy users' behaviour.  NEF is recruiting the MK-based organisations to participate in the project to test approaches to reducing their energy demand and increasing their local electricity generation at peak times of day.

Project Website: Falcon

Thinking Energy (E.ON)

NEF is working in partnership with E.ON and Milton Keynes Council on a Smart Homes project called 'Thinking Energy'. We will be running a series of trials from autumn 2011 until winter 2013 in various areas in Milton Keynes. This project will help us better understand energy production and use in the home hence save energy and future proof our homes from tomorrow's energy challenges.

Project Website: Thinking Energy