ABINGDON COMPANY SMASHES CROWDCUBE TARGET TO HELP COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS REDUCE HEATING BILLS

While regional firms are finding strategic solutions to provide the UK with energy security in the future, innovative start-ups are using tech to help households and businesses address spiralling energy prices right now.

Abingdon-based EcoSync has developed smart tech to enable commercial buildings to stop heating empty rooms, reducing energy consumption and costs by a possible 50 per cent.

In September the firm – founded by Oxford University engineers – smashed its Crowdcube investment target, raising just shy of £1 million against a target of £400,000.

Customer orders are up by 260 per cent, and the Ministry of Defence and Oxfordshire County Council are among the organisations showing an interest in EcoSync's technology.

Its energy management platform adapts temperature control to changing occupancy levels in commercial buildings and helps customers to achieve 30-40 per cent reductions in energy consumption by identifying rooms that are unoccupied and turning the heating off where appropriate.

EcoSync's research highlights that 50 per cent of heating energy in commercial buildings can be wasted by empty rooms.

EcoSync uses energy-harvesting IoT tech to easily retrofit to radiators making them intelligent to only heat rooms according to occupancy and need.

Its solution can be rapidly deployed with no interruption and complements other efficiency measures such as heat pumps and insulation. Payback, says the company, can be achieved in under three years.