Inventors: Dr. Anna-Maria Kypriaou & Dr. Tashiv Ramsander, Engineering & Eyesea Green
Sustainability and decarbonisation are stated key priorities of many organisations but can be difficult to achieve in practise. One key way to decarbonise is to reduce the amount of energy used. In particular heating and cooling use significant amounts of energy, as do certain types of electrical appliances.
In large buildings with multiple occupants, for example student accommodation or care homes, not only is the energy usage not well understood, but centralised building management systems often lead to the people inside feeling either too hot or too cold on a regular basis.
Eyesea Green has developed ways to optimise and reduce energy usage while also improving occupants’ comfort levels. Their approach is to optimise energy demand at the level of the individual electrical plugs. By using individual smart-plugs plus an in-room controller, they have shown that they can reduce energy usage by 25-35% over a year, while improving the occupier’s comfort. In addition, the simplicity of using a plug-based system is that installation takes only minutes per room and does not require any building works.
Eyesea Green’s initial devices have been installed in over 1000 rooms already, meaning that they have over 1000 controllers and over 5000 smart-plugs live and working, some of which have been in use for the past 2 years.
The question for the i-Team is to help the inventors plan their next steps, so that they can find the best market entry strategy to take them from these initial installations into other markets and sectors. By interviewing the occupiers of relevant types of building and relevant industry experts, the i-Team will analyse and recommend the best markets for the technology going forward.