Centrica-owned UK energy supplier British Gas is to work with building research specialists BRE on energy consumption and the use of energy efficiency technologists.

Under the agreement between the two organisations, British Gas will use a unit in BRE’s Victorian terrace demonstration project – Integer House – to analyse how users interact with home energy control systems and smart meters.

The utility will build an ‘operations room’ in the Victorian terrace to a high level of thermal efficiency, where it will showcase and test products and technologies like internal and external insulation, smart meters, electric vehicle charging points and solar photovoltaics.

The research will form part of British Gas’s SmartHomes project, which aims to help domestic customers reduce energy usage through smart technologies and sustainable refurbishment.

Starting next summer, BRE and its research partners also plan to find guinea pigs to live in Integer House for up to two years and provide live-in data and user feedback of the building.

“We are hugely excited about this partnership with the BRE, which will help us understand how to apply new technology into British homes making them more efficient and cheaper to run,” says Gearoid Lane of British Gas’s new markets division.

For further information:
www.britishgas.co.uk
www.centrica.com/
www.bre.co.uk/

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