City council partners with energy and tech firms to pilot drone heat-mapping scheme
A large city council is partnering with a major energy firm and a tech start-up to pilot a thermal camera drone heat-mapping scheme on more than 4,000 homes.
The initiative between Coventry City Council, E.ON and Kestrix will use thermal images to analyse the energy efficiency of thousands of homes.
The partnership hopes the plans will show how thermal camera drones and advanced 3D heat-loss modelling can be used at scale to provide real-world data on large numbers of the council’s stock.
Kestrix believes this will allow better and faster targeting of improvement works, with the aim of making homes more energy efficient and, ultimately, cheaper to heat.
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Last year, Inside Housing spoke to tech start-up Kestrix about how its drones scan buildings from about 50 metres high and assess the homes that are leaking heat.
A typical survey takes a few minutes, and the 3D heat-loss model highlights opportunities for building works at scale, with machine-learning insights recommending what improvements could work best and at lowest cost.
Jim O’Boyle, cabinet member for jobs, regeneration and climate change at Coventry Council, said: “This new technological innovation will allow E.ON, our strategic energy partner, to assess heat loss from homes at scale and get vital data on where and how we can encourage or support local people to make improvements – in turn saving them cash on their heating bills.
“It will also mean that some people who might not qualify for support will be able to have a look at the data for their home in case there is action they want to take.”
Drone flights for the pilot started this month after notifying residents.
Once the Kestrix team has reviewed the results, residents will be contacted again to discuss any options for making their home more energy efficient. This may include options for residents to access funding streams for support with home improvements.
Lucy Lyons, co-founder of Kestrix, said: “There is no scalable, cost-effective way of knowing reliably how heat is lost across the millions of buildings we all live, work and play in – let alone how to fix it and how much fixes will cost.
“We need to upgrade millions of homes across the UK and with scarce finance, time and resources, it’s critical to put insulation where it’s needed. With partners like E.ON and Coventry City Council, we have the ambition and scale to make a real difference in people’s lives.”
The collaboration between E.ON and Kestrix grew from the Free Electrons open innovation programme, in which the energy firm and other leading global utilities worked with promising start-ups to develop innovative solutions for the world of new energy.
Vijay Tank, chief operating officer at E.ON Infrastructure Solutions, said: “At E.ON we have improved hundreds of thousands of homes going back many years, but if the UK is to meet its net zero targets, we are going to need to improve 1.8 homes every minute from now to 2050.
“We need to go further and faster, and that’s where our relationship with Kestrix and our strategic energy partnership with the City of Coventry come in. Bringing together the city and this cutting-edge technology means we can deliver accurate data at scale and take away any guesswork in where exactly are the worst-performing homes and what help we can get to those who need it most.”
Earlier this month, the mayor of West Midlands, the region where Coventry Council is based, launched a £167m energy efficiency fund to upgrade up to 10,000 homes.
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