Sensing and tackling fuel poverty

What are some of the key factors – technical, behavioural or structural – that make fuel poverty such a persistent issue?

Outside the obvious – deprivation and low income levels – my experience of growing up in Glasgow and working closely with the social housing sector is that how people use their homes is a big factor.

It can be a case of not knowing how to use your home, so keeping windows open for so long that they let the heat out, for example, or turning the heating up for short periods rather than heating homes consistently at a lower temperature.

Cost does become a big factor. There are high levels of unemployment in Scotland, especially in Glasgow. So there are various factors at play.

How might environmental sensor technology help to tackle this issue?

The sensors monitor carbon dioxide, temperature and humidity. These metrics are then presented on a dashboard, so the social landlord can look at different insights. Is that property losing heat quite consistently through the day or over a longer period of time? Is it sitting persistently at a low temperature for weeks on end, which may then drive up the risk of things like damp and mould appearing inside?

These sensors can help identify issues before they become issues. The dashboard updates every 15 minutes, so if that property was consistently sitting at under 18˚C for a persistent amount of time, it would flag up on the dashboard as a cold-home risk.

The system can flag up homes at risk of damp and mould, too. These risks appear on the dashboard in a traffic light system depending on the level of urgency. These insights can help landlords understand where to direct their information and resources.

What are the barriers that you or your clients encounter in setting up these kinds of systems?

I look after more than 60 social landlords in the Glasgow area, which is significantly larger than many other regions, and every landlord has the same goal of improving their homes. But the resources they can draw on are all different, starting with finance. The sector in Scotland doesn’t get as much funding as the rest of the UK, so that’s the biggest barrier.

This is followed by the challenges in implementing a roll-out of this technology. For example, a large organisation with around 30,000 homes may find [installing sensors] more difficult in terms of cost as opposed to a smaller organisation with 500 homes. However, the larger landlord will have more resources in terms of teams.

One example I can give of a social landlord that has done this successfully is West Dunbartonshire Council, which manages around 10,500 homes. The council is probably the poster project for Scotland – potentially even the UK – because it has set about installing sensors in every single home.

In terms of fuel poverty, the council can use the data from the sensors to track the impact of energy efficiency measures they have installed, such as external wall insulation.

The council started the project in January last year. It put teams in place to work with the contractors installing the sensors, as well as to monitor the dashboard and follow up with tenants. In my opinion, that’s the right way to do it – it’s really important to ensure that tenants understand what this technology does and how it can benefit them.

How can landlords use this information to help residents before they fall into fuel poverty?

West Dunbartonshire Council has building service officers covering different areas, and every Monday we print off reports for each area on which properties are a cold-home risk, so the officers can then make contact with the tenant. The idea is that they can get ahead of an issue before it becomes a problem.

Resident engagement is absolutely key here. It’s about educating people about how to use their homes. The tenants are given access to an app that shows them the data from their own homes, which they can use to educate themselves. It’s all about self-learning. That’s the whole idea behind this technology.

But it’s not just about the client, it’s about being transparent with residents. This starts with the contractors. When they install the sensors, they will tell the tenants what’s being installed and why. That’s accompanied by press releases and letters – in this case, these come from the council. There have also been tenant engagement days. This has all been pivotal to increasing residents’ understanding.

The education aspect is huge. It’s really important to help residents understand their own homes, and for councils or housing associations to be transparent in order to improve the lives of their tenants.

What do you mean by ‘transparency’ in this context?

It means that the technology is not just for landlords to monitor or review, it’s about ensuring tenants get the benefit of the sensors, too. That’s where transparency comes in. West Dunbartonshire Council set up an email address regarding the sensors it installed in the homes so that tenants can get in touch with any queries.

The council’s building service officers are going out and speaking to tenants and explaining what the sensors do and how the app works. They also inform tenants of any interventions that have been made to their homes as a result of the insights from the data.

This transparency between landlord and tenant has been brilliant because tenants know they can access the information themselves, they can work out what’s going on in their homes and talk to their landlord about how to improve things.

Is there any technology on the way that could also help to address fuel poverty? 

We currently have a smart meter integration that’s already being rolled out in some parts of Scotland. This gives landlords the opportunity to access tenants’ electricity usage patterns, and that could clearly be useful in helping to identify fuel poverty. The data filters from the smart meters to the landlords’ digital dashboards and shows them how much electricity and gas tenants are using. It would obviously need consent from tenants, but it’s free to set up and use.

Not everyone has a smart meter – today, around 57% of all households in Scotland have one installed – but it’s certainly a tool that many social landlords will want to use in the fight against fuel poverty.

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