Earth Notes: Energy Game Changer: HaaS (Heating as a Service) Lite Intro

Updated 2023-03-21.
EGC: an introduction to the HaaS (Heating as a Service) Lite project.

HaaS Lite - Heating as a Service Lite (2017/2018)

HaaS logo2
A feasibility study on the opportunity offered by the smart meter rollout to provide data supporting the financing of energy saving measures and exploring the concept of 'Heating as a Service'.
People would like to be kept warm in their homes in winter at a reasonable cost. The best solution would be for them to be able to pay directly for the service of being kept warm (Heating as as Service) with a simple unfussy consumer-friendly offering. Rather than today's reality of messing around with paying for gas and electricity and fiddling with TRVs and thermostats and clocks and boiler servicing and complex tariffs and all the rest...

Let the HaaS supplier work out how to provide that warmth in the most efficient way possible, to maintain its margins and profits. An important but achievable assumption here is that 'efficient' also implies reduced carbon emissions across the whole system, wherever the energy is sourced and however deployed. Eg grid electricity generation powering a heat-pump and thermal store for off-peak use. Or local gas burned in an on-demand condensing combi boiler.

This is a partially Innovate UK funded study to find how to get the desired outcome (warm toes) paid for, rather than the current carbon-laden cubic metres of gas or kWh of electricity. This allows reduction of domestic home-heating carbon footprint while keeping people warm and healthy, and utilities and other suppliers viable. Also known as utility decoupling, ie separating profits from carbon emissions.

In particular we see HaaS Lite as one way to reach large but currently poorly-served sectors such as private renters, that the Green Deal should have reached. But it was too ponderous, complex and expensive.

We see three strands that all have to work together to make HaaS successful:

The first desk-based research work package (WP1) explores what is already out there, what works and what does not.

Work to Home

HaaS Lite follows OpenTRV's general approach of bringing to the home appropriate energy efficiency tools that have been seen to work in commercial settings, making them simple to use and understand for real people. That is, non-specialists who have other things to focus their mental energies on.

Further, we aim to outline more than one scheme to achieve the desired effect, to help ensure that the HaaS concept is robust.

Living Documents

These EGC documents will be updated from time to time with new information and references as they become available. Please check the 'last updated' date in the footer of each document's Web page. In particular, the references will be added to as relevant material is found.