Kestrix awarded £240k from InnovateUK to use AI to measure home heat loss at scale

Birmingham, United Kingdom – If you are in the housing, construction, or home energy industry, or just live in a draughty English home, you may agree that the UK’s Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) are at best inaccurate, and at worst, misleading – especially when it comes to retrofit and net zero planning.

Bad data leads to worse problems: without a reliable system to measure efficiency, prioritising which buildings to retrofit (insulate) first and budgeting retrofit projects are herculean tasks for housing providers and contractors. Furthermore, it makes tracking progress towards targets around carbon reduction close to impossible.

Recognising a market need for standardised information on what renovations to do, where, and when, InnovateUK, the UK’s Innovation agency, unveiled at UK Construction Week Wednesday that Kestrix and partners Peabody Trust and United Living Property Services Ltd. have been awarded a £240,000 grant to crack retrofit’s data challenge.

The collaborative project, lasting 2 years, supports the development, demonstration, and commercialisation of novel Rapid Thermal Performance Assessment Algorithms (RaThPAs) – powerful algorithms that interpret thermal images of buildings for retrofit insights. AI predicts U-values (heat transfer) of varying materials, identifies faulty insulation, and estimates overall space heating demand intensity (the rate at which the whole building leaks heat). When applied at portfolio-scale, these allow a housing provider, city, or energy utility to stack-rank subsets of buildings by level of thermal efficiency with more confidence than ever before, helping prioritise work and plan for net zero over the long term.

 "This project brings together the machine learning and computer vision expertise of Kestrix, the extensive experience of Peabody Trust as one of the UK's largest social housing providers, and the retrofit delivery leadership of United Living." said Lucy Lyons, CEO of Kestrix. "Together, we aim to demonstrate a game-changing technology that will transform the way the industry approaches retrofit, enabling smarter, smoother retrofit planning – and ultimately the more efficient allocation of scarce retrofit resources."

Richard Ellis, Director of Sustainability for Peabody, said: “It’s clear that improving the energy efficiency of homes is crucial to reducing carbon emissions and lowering costs for residents. We also know that warmer and more cost-efficient homes vastly improve residents’ lives. But we don’t yet have a quick, completely accurate and efficient way of planning and prioritising our retrofit works. Our hope is that this project and others like it will unlock the untapped potential of advancing technology, ultimately helping us to retrofit homes faster and more effectively than ever before.”

Are you a housing provider, local authority, or energy retailer? Contact Kestrix Co-founder & CEO Lucy Lyons at lucy@kestrix.io to discuss pilot opportuinties.