Domestic Energy Assessor back to work. Remote EPC assessment –proof of concept and business model development programme.

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Innovate UK
Innovate UK
Innovate UK
Innovate UK
Innovate UK

£246,725

May 31, 2020

Aug. 31, 2020

Currently, domestic Energy Assessors (DEA) carry out 110,000 Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) inspections on average per month, these assessments are carried out at the property. In the UK, EPCs range in price from £45 -- 165, generating over £60,000,000 revenues a year for 10,000 plus DEAs. An EPC is a requirement for selling and renting houses.

The government instructions to DEAs has resulted in the number of EPCs being conducted dropping in April by 80% according to the Ministry of Housing Communities & local government figures on April 13th. There are approximately 10,000+ DEA's across the UK who as a result have seen their income drop by 80%. This has inspired the industry to consider remote energy performance certificate assessments.

Remote EPC assessments would address three challenges in the UK built environment: (1) reduce the time assessors spend travelling to and from homes thereby increase productivity, in some case by 100%; (2) increase resilience of the EPC process by allowing remote assessments during future waves of COVID19; (3) Reduce the CO2 of transport to and from homes by more than 1000 tonnes of CO2\.

This ambitious project aims to test the feasibility of conducting accurate remote EPCs that are embraced by domestic energy accessors, tenants and owner-occupiers. The project looks to get thousands of accessors working remotely and thereby accelerate the modernisation of the UK and European property and energy sector aligned to the UK's Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF) - prospering from the energy revolution.

We have a top-class UK industry consortium that is experienced in EPCs, building businesses, products and services with a track record of delivering for business and governments worldwide.

The technical solution we aim to develop is a survey capability for EPCs to be conducted by the DEAs remotely and be highly automated. The remote capability would be a combination of open-source data, a process for gathering the required evidence within the homes (via questionnaire, photos, video, telephone call or combination of), and the software to support the data gathering process.

Bringing new technical competencies to an existing market would be considered 'radical innovation' according to G. P. Pisano' The Innovation Landscape Map' 2015\.