Smart(er) Thinking Needed To Help The Most Vulnerable

I am writing this the day after the Autumn Spending Review, which among many measures, included a huge focus on how the Government wants to ‘level up the country’, creating a new post-pandemic economy, with higher wages and higher skills. Part of this is the £500 million ‘Multiply’ scheme, which aims to increase numeracy and basic mathematics for adults in the United Kingdom via in person tutoring, digital training and flexible courses.

Lack of basic skills to access digital training

It is laudable, but there is an elephant in the classroom here, a lot of people do not have the basic skills and confidence, to access digital training and these are the ones, who are in danger of being left further behind.

What does this have to do with heating their homes? It comes down to access and confidence around tech and that begins in the home.

Smart technology inaccessible to most people

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we heard from far too many people, who simply couldn’t get to grips with the tech

We work at the sharp end of this, with many years of experience showing us that while smart tech and smart homes sound fantastic (and for the majority, they are indeed), however, for too many people, it remains inaccessible. They are the most vulnerable and they need help.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we heard from far too many people, who simply couldn’t get to grips with the tech and they were suffering as a result.

Widespread adoption of digital control systems

In a welcome drive to improve the energy efficiency of electric heaters, more sophisticated digital control systems have seen widespread introduction. However, for people who are not digitally savvy, they are now presented with a product that they struggle to use as intended.

Sadly, many are subsequently bypassing the very systems designed to improve efficiency and resorting to basic manual control of their appliances. For many users, the complicated programming and multiple overrides is even leading to them having no heat at all.

manual settings of heaters lead to High Energy consumption

In too many cases, these energy-saving thermostatic controls have caused more anxiety and the energy-efficient controls are not being correctly used. Additionally, due to the heaters being left on manual settings, there are many cases of higher energy consumption than needed.

The gadgets are great, but if you can’t understand them or use them, they are redundant and can even be counterproductive.

System diagnostics

Of course, during the COVID-19 pandemic, a home visit was not even an option for many customers

Ordinarily, we would schedule a visit to diagnose these types of problems, but this can take too long, which causes frustration and affects the well-being of the customer. Of course, during the COVID-19 pandemic, a home visit was not even an option for many customers, who were self-isolating.

However, new computer modeling research from Harvard University warns that intermittent measures may need to be maintained well into 2022, therefore, social distancing will remain a key concern for our vulnerable community.

Current solutions for the digital savvy

Current solutions available are for the digital savvy, however, these still do not provide early fault finding and they are not accessible to a huge part of our society, approximately 5.3 million adults, who have never used the internet in the United Kingdom and 53% of these adults are aged 75 plus.

We decided to do something about this, by devising a robust solution that will eliminate multiple site maintenance visits and provide immediate solutions, without customers needing to understand digital technologies.

CAVE smart thermostat with intelligent remote communications

As a result, this winter will see the launch of Trust Electric Heating’s CAVE product, a smart thermostat for the confined, adults, vulnerable and elderly people.

CAVE builds on our existing digital thermostat technology, further developing it to include intelligent remote communications. This will allow remote access to program the system, monitor/manage energy use and to diagnose and solve a variety of faults that would traditionally require a visit from an engineer.

Transforming CAVE into a stand-alone product

There are over 8 million adults over 70 years old in the UK, who are classed as vulnerable

The pace of development has been accelerated by a strategic Knowledge Transfer Partnership with the University of Huddersfield and backed by Innovate UK, who awarded us with a further development grant, earlier in 2021, to transform CAVE into a stand-alone product that will work on all electric radiators.

There are over 8 million adults over 70 years old in the UK, who are classed as vulnerable and around 1.5 million adults (some not over 70) have been asked to self-isolate due to their underlying health conditions as they are classed as our shielded society. For these individuals the present pandemic has changed their life significantly.

Remote monitoring, diagnosis and control of electric heating systems

CAVE is a web-based technology that enables remote monitoring, diagnosis and control of electric heating systems, providing help and support for this critically overlooked group.

In an era, when the pace of change is already so fast, sometimes it pays to slow down a little and adjust the speed, as there are a lot of people who we must not leave behind in the digital economy.