A tool that provides the analysis to establish targeted retrofit improvements has been launched following successful testing.
Senze deploys sensors in each room of a home, instead of relying on visual inspections or desktop analysis, and builds a real-time picture of the energy performance and health of a building to pinpoint exactly where heat loss is happening. By accurately measuring the thermal and energy performance of a home, Senze can prescribe smaller and more targeted measures to retrofit old and cold housing stock more efficiently and cost-effectively.
The tool has been tested by Bromford Housing, the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, the Church of England, Greater Manchester Combined Authority and the New York City Housing Authority.
In an unspecified pilot project, Senze revealed that one home performed 59% better than its Energy Performance Certificate rating, enabling a social landlord to save £25,838 on the cost of unnecessary external wall insulation work compared to recommendations based on theoretical analysis.
Across pilot projects undertaken so far, the average savings achieved by Senze per home are:
- £4,890 on capital retrofit costs;
- £133.90 on fuel bills per year;
- 1.29-tonne of CO2 a year; and
- nine hours less time spent on assessment and consultancy by using live data instead of visual inspections and reports.
Ending fuel poverty
The co-founders of Senze are: Related Argent chairman David Partridge; Joseph Michael Daniels, the founder of net-zero housebuilder Project Etopia; and Tom Fenton, former chief executive and founder of Veritherm.
Partridge said: “Retrofitting British homes to reach net zero is estimated to cost more than £500bn. But what if we could actually do it much more cheaply? Senze is a genuinely gamechanging British technology [that] will enable the UK to tackle this colossal retrofit challenge at pace and scale.
“By pinpointing exactly where and how homes need remedial works, Senze could save social housing landlords hundreds of millions of pounds, help meet our national decarbonisation obligations, and most importantly, at the same time lift more people out of fuel poverty.”
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