Green(er) house: Piloting technology to cut heating-related energy use

As part of Cambridge Green Week, St Catharine’s College is pleased to announce the start of an innovative pilot at one of our properties that is designed to test whether installing a novel heating control system is a viable way to help our community reduce energy consumption and associated emissions.

For the pilot, St Catharine’s chose to partner with EcoSync, a spin-out from the University of Oxford, that has developed a patent-pending technology that both residents and the College itself can adjust to control temperature settings in individual rooms. The result is that each room can be heated according to occupancy and need, and on average EcoSync schemes are able to reduce overall heat-related energy consumption by 40 per cent.

Mel Kydd, Head of Buildings & Maintenance at St Catharine’s, explained:

“Following the College’s recent commitment to achieving net zero emissions by 2040, my team is exploring a range of ways to cut heating-related emissions across the College estate. Insulation is going to be key and surveys are already ongoing across our different buildings. However, it also made sense to trial a solution like EcoSync and see if this could work in practice for all the different groups in our community, given that our vacation periods mean that we often end up heating empty rooms unnecessarily.”

Overlooking the College’s sport pitches, the Vicarage is a terrace house on South Green Road that is owned by St Catharine’s. Home to four of our postgraduate students, the property is fitted with gas-powered central heating. From 1 April, the St Catharine’s maintenance team started fitting EcoSync hardware to the existing radiators in each of the student bedrooms, as well as the lounge, bathroom, kitchen and hallway. Mel and her team were immediately able to monitor and adjust the temperature in each space:

“We started to see cuts in energy use straight away, notably over the recent Easter weekend: it is a popular time to travel and the weather was exceptionally warm so I was able to use the EcoSync system remotely to turn off the central heating at the Vicarage, safe in the knowledge that let any students in residence were free to decide if and when they needed a boost of heating. I particularly like ‘open window mode’, which is activated when the system senses that a window has been opened and responds by reducing the demand for heating.”

The College will be carefully monitoring how the system beds in and the maintenance team is already working with students to collect feedback and begin to iron out any teething issues. A decision on if and how to roll-out the system to other properties will depend on student feedback and data collected over the course of the pilot.

Sam Stephenson, an Engineering PhD student and Green Officer on the St Catharine’s MCR Committee that represents our postgraduate community involved in the pilot, commented:

“I’m pleased that Catz is exploring new ways to reduce our emissions which can complement the necessary upgrades to our buildings. Pilot schemes like these are essential to the success of the College’s decarbonisation plans and I hope the students involved continue to engage with it honestly and openly so we can work to implement meaningful solutions that meet our net zero emission goals.”