Veritherm provide a smart thermal measurement technology, offering real world measurement, testing and verification of building energy performance. The business offers a thermal test for domestic and commercial buildings that provides data to accurately design retrofit heating systems and a monitoring service to validate performance.

The business was selected to work with Energy Systems Catapult to help develop a one-stop-shop value proposition for the thermal test for owner occupier consumers. Driven by a critical need to move away from gas and oil-fired heating, the project scope was to understand this markets’ needs and devise better support across the entire journey from planning and installation to ongoing optimisation.

The challenge 

Veritherm want to advance their proposition through a better understanding of their potential customers. The Catapult worked with the business to help fill this gap by conducting customer needs research. The decision was taken to focus this project on the owner occupier market, where heat pumps can be oversized by up to 30% for the property needs, leading to energy wastage and overspend on household energy of thousands of pounds per year. It was recognised there are other markets that could be explored in the future, for example social housing.

The innovation

Veritherm can accurately measure and verify energy loss in just twelve hours using a proprietary four-step Building Performance Evaluation measurement technique that’s quick, simple and cost-effective.

Rather than using existing heat loss assessments which rely on simple visual inspections, Veritherm’s measurement technique provides real-world data to give a far better understanding of the actual amount of energy that is lost through the thermal envelope of a building. With an elegant mix of advanced mathematics, low-cost assessments and testing and a highly scalable digital platform, the Veritherm technology has revolutionised in-situ thermal performance measurement.

The solution

Together with the Catapult, Veritherm:

• Accelerated their time to market through the support of the Climate Innovation Platform (CIP) with HSBC, Energy Systems Catapult and University of Birmingham. The business had access to tailored incubation manager support including mentoring, customer insights research, funding connections, and investor / pitch preparation, as well as advice on evolving energy regulations.
• Conducted analysis of potential markets: The Catapult conducted detailed analysis that considered potential target markets for their service and assessed how and where Veritherm’s service could provide best value.
• Carried out stakeholder identification: A number of different stakeholders were identified, who had relevant access to the owner occupier market (both direct and indirect). Five stakeholder types were chosen for further exploration in the workshop: Green mortgage and loan providers, energy suppliers, architects, retrofit coordinators/domestic energy assessors and heat Pump installers.

The impact

The Catapult explored the different ways Veritherm’s service could provide value to these five types of stakeholders. They explored the barriers to effective service delivery and selected the highest value. Energy suppliers and green home loans providers were selected as the two priority markets for accelerating business growth at pace. Veritherm and the Catapult were then able to refine the value proposition and customer experience and design the business model to support go to market. Examples of these include:

• Helping customers understand the data and lead them to informed, data driven
• Reducing the burden of the survey on the occupant

Next steps

• Veritherm have a valuable set of recommendations and analysis to help inform their next phase of business growth.
• This data-informed decision making reduces business and financial risk and allows Veritherm to accelerate growth in a highly strategic way.
• The business is devising propositions and processes for green mortgage providers, with greater confidence that the service design fits their needs and those of the end consumers.