Smart meters provide real-time data that can help consumers understand their energy use from moment to moment. But they’re also capturing increasing amounts of potentially useful data with applications for consumers, energy companies, policymakers and regulators.

Now that we have developed our own energy-use profiles from smart meter data, we want to understand how they could be used to support households to decarbonise their homes.

What if understanding how they use energy over longer periods could inform how consumers make bigger decisions? For instance, which tariff should they be on? Or could getting a heat pump lower their energy bills? This project will explore how consumers engage with the concept of an ‘energy-use profile’. Does it make sense? Is it exciting or boring? Could it increase their confidence to make big decisions? 

This piece of work was initiated as part of our work on energy profiles. In this project, we’re using smart meter data from GB households to develop a set of energy-use profiles, with each profile corresponding to a different pattern of energy usage. The data allows us to describe each usage pattern and identify key differences between demographics, appliances and property characteristics of the households in each profile. The profiles are based solely on half-hourly energy consumption data, and contextual information is brought in afterwards to understand potential drivers of consumption.

Our objective is to grow our understanding of the questions above by prototyping a ‘smart tariff finder’. We believe lots of people who currently own heat pumps could save hundreds of pounds by switching tariffs and flexing their demand. But we also know that only around 6% of heat pump owners are currently doing this. 

We’re not sure whether we’ll build and scale this tool. But this exploratory work will help us inform future work in the domain as we’re aiming to use energy profiles to support householders with decisions for their home heating. By the end of this project, we will better understand the interest from consumers in data-informed products to obtain energy advice.

In this project, we’re looking at supporting existing and prospective heat pump owners through personalised advice. We will do so by providing information about heat pump running costs and potential savings from being on a flexible tariff. Recent research by Nesta has shown that very few heat pump owners are taking advantage of these tariffs. Additionally, modelling commissioned by Nesta from Cornwall Insight suggests that being on a flexible tariff could help one household save up to £650 per year. This means that the existing 260,000 households with heat pumps could save money every year if they were given the right advice on their electricity tariff and behaviours. Furthermore, being able to provide clearer running cost expectations to households interested in changing their heating system might encourage heat pump adoption.

From January to April 2025, we will conduct user research and prototyping to test a product providing tailored advice to households based on energy-use profiles. Our aim is to grow our understanding of households’ motivation towards and their willingness to share personal information about their energy consumption (eg, smart meter data, presence of an electric vehicle, source of heating). Through this project, we will be combining design and behavioural science methods taking a “test-and-learn” approach. To that end, we have anticipated two series of interviews with owner-occupiers to test low-fidelity prototypes enabling us to quickly generate insights and iterate on our work. We will share our learnings in April.