We’re delighted to announce HEEAT, the Home Energy Efficiency Advice Tool, a two-year project to build an open-source whole-home energy assessment tool for community groups across Great Britain. A good home energy survey can take around ten hours and relies on specialist expertise and a patchwork of separate tools, which raises costs and puts trusted advice out of reach for many households. HEEAT will combine AI-assisted survey capture with half-hourly modelling using the Government’s Home Energy Model, covering fabric, heat pumps, solar PV, batteries, tariffs, and damp and mould risks.
Our target is to cut assessment time by around 75%, so that volunteer and professional groups can offer faster, more consistent and more personalised retrofit advice at lower cost. The project is funded through the Energy Industry Voluntary Redress Scheme, administered by the Energy Saving Trust.
HEEAT is led by BWCE and brings together community energy groups from around Great Britain with deep experience in home energy advice, who will help shape the tool and test it in real homes. Everything we build, including the software, data structures and training resources, will be released openly and owned jointly by the community groups who use it.
As the project begins, we are recruiting front- and back-end technical developers and procuring expertise in community groups landscape research.