Decarbonisation, decentralisation, and digitalisation are driving changes in the market, challenging how people might experience energy in the future.

A key enabler of this change will be the technology people bring into their homes and how they choose to use it. Energy Systems Catapult has been looking at the customer journey as people buy, use and experience problems with these technologies.

There are three main themes emerging from the work – control, understanding and support when things go wrong.

Key points

• The transition from kilowatt hours to ‘warm hours’ was difficult for some, especially when they had to compare prices with traditional models
• Some did not fully understand the details of the energy offer before they had experienced it and there was evidence that problems may only emerge as the service is used over time
• Within the trial, consumers were comfortable with sharing their data but when probed did not know who accessed their data, how often and how to change their data sharing preferences
• Consumers did not always know who would have been responsible if something went wrong.

Publications

The work, commissioned by Citizens Advice, has been broken down into two reports: