Brexit adds uncertainty to tough times for the social housing sector, but innovation shines a light at the end of the tunnel

The RSL sector needs help to remain the largest market for microgen in the UK – manufacturers and utilities must provide the momentum government measures do not.

With our Customer Panel research moving into the next stages it is time for another edition in our series of blogs looking at some of the key insights coming from this ongoing research.

Our first exercise conducted earlier this year showed that there continues to be a mismatch between customers who buy microgen and those who want to buy it. The biggest factor that plays into this is the fact that many customers who want to install often cannot afford the upfront investment. However, we find that they are more than open to using alternative funding options that would solve the upfront cost barrier.

In my last blog I introduced the Delta-ee Customer Panel – a brand new resource made up of 1,000 UK homeowners. Our panellists will participate in numerous exercises throughout the year, enabling us to explore in detail customer attitudes to heat, energy, technologies, new business models, to name a few the key uses.

In this post I share some interesting findings from our first research piece with the panel and look specifically at what our participants say about the opportunity for energy storage.

We are very excited to announce the launch of the Delta-ee Customer Panel. This is a brand new resource made up of 1,000 panellists who will participate in a series of research exercises – to be conducted mainly as part of our ‘Heat Insight Service’ (HIS) programme for 2016/17.

The panel is made up of a highly-representative sample of UK homeowners – whose views, feedback and experiences will provide unique insight as we help our clients identify the key opportunities for growth in the domestic heating sector (which, irrespective of recent political events, will remain the continent’s largest heating market).

According to DECC residential PV (< 4kWp) has just had its record year, with 172,318 installations in 2015 (topping the previous one in 2012 with ~160,000 installations).  This was aided by the noticeable surge of installations towards the end of the year due to expected and finally confirmed Feed-in Tariff (FiT) cuts that took place at the start of this month.

While January of this year is still expected to show some of the surge from the customers that were jumping on the last train of the old FiT rate, there is a lot of uncertainty around the future of the UK market. Are subsidy cuts the beginning of the end for residential PV? Or, will innovations in technology and finance step in to continue the market development towards bright future? 

In the latest survey of British homeowners carried out under the Delta-ee Microgen Insight Service it was revealed that the inclusion of remote control and remote monitoring / maintenance features could have a sizeable impact on sales of renewable heating products.

This appears a strong option for product suppliers who want to widen their market beyond the small portion of homeowners that are already buying. We are beginning to see more of the latest products on the market (particularly air-source heat pumps) offering this feature.