LONDON REBUILDING SOCIETY PARTNERS ENERGY SAVINGS TRUST AND EASY TOWN IN GROUND BREAKING PROJECT CALLED SHIMMER
Technology that allows consumers to control all the energy usage in their homes in one place is to gain from £3.8m in government funding. Thirteen projects that integrate ‘smart’ energy meters with communications technology will receive money from the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) in partnership with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS).
The aim is to combine energy-usage data with central control of heating, household appliances and microgeneration, in order to enable consumers to more easily reduce energy waste and save money.
The Energy Saving Trust (EST) in partnership with London Rebuilding Society (LRS) and Easy Town CIC is developing one of the projects as part of its own attempt to combine energy management with online payments, focusing particularly on low-income households that would benefit most from making clearer the link between specific energy-saving measures and how much money they save.
The six-month Smart Homes Integrating Meters Money Energy Research (SHIMMER) project will see around 20 homes in London fitted with solar panels and a sensor to read their energy usage from their normal electricity meter. This information will then be transmitted to a server and the data made available online, linked to an online payment system such as Paypal.
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