Retrometer aims to create an advance monitoring and verification (M&V) system for UK retrofit, so that householders and housing providers can measure the success of energy efficiency works and quantify the actual savings achieved. The project is funded by the regulator Ofgem as part of the Strategic Investment Fund (SIF) and delivered by a partnership led by Electricity North West Ltd including Carbon Co-op, Energy Systems Catapult (ESC), Energy Pro Ltd and Manchester City Council (MCC). This partnership brings together years of experience in addressing M&V methodologies and builds on previous work by the consortium members such as the Green Finance Initiative’s MES Report , ESC’s Metered Energy Savings Report and our own OpenEnEffS project. While the project is currently in its early stages, we have already achieved a great deal in developing business models and understanding the value of domestic retrofit to the grid operator, avoiding the costs of reinforcing our ageing energy infrastructure to meet the demands of heat pumps and electric vehicles. In future stages of the project we hope to be able to test the methodologies developed via a large scale social housing retrofit project and an area based scheme run by Carbon Co-op, measuring the impact of the works on demand at local electricity substations.
We believe that a consistent methodology to accurately meter the energy and cost savings of energy efficiency measures has the power to unlock pay-for-performance financing and increase uptake, leading to reduced costs for consumers and additional flexibility services for the DNO.