METER addresses a fundamental research question: "What is the temporal relationship between electricity consumption and household activities?". To date this relationship is still poorly understood. METER will address this gap by collecting electricity consumption data in parallel with time-use information using adapted smart phone technology. A detailed understanding of 'what electricity is used for', especially during peak demand periods, is important in addressing emerging system balancing challenges and to develop appropriate policy frameworks and business models leading to the cost effective integration of low-carbon generation. At present electricity is supplied based on a 'predict and provide' paradigm - so long as we can forecast 'how much' electricity is required at any one time, the fleet of mostly fossil fuel based plants can be scheduled to deliver. Little knowledge about the end-uses of energy has been required for this approach. With low carbon sources, such as nuclear, solar and wind, more flexibility may be required from the demand side. Understanding the end use activities supported by electricity becomes more important when seeking to reduce or shift the timing of consumption. Studies attempting to measure electricity use at the appliance level have so far been limited in their scale by the cost and complexity of instrumentation. The absence of statistically robust consumption data has been noted as limiting the UK's world leading research in this area. METER develops a new approach to collect electricity consumption in parallel with time-use information. Smart phone technology, developed by colleagues at Oxford, will be deployed to measure electricity consumption at 1 second resolution and ask participants about the activities they undertake at critical times of the day. The use of smart phones allows this process to be performed at unprecedentedly low costs, such that over 2000 households can be included in the study. This scale is important, because electricity uses are highly diverse and only a sufficiently large sample allows to develop statistically significant evidence for researchers and policy makers. The concurrent collection of time-use and electricity consumption can improve the accuracy of time-use research and provide new insights into the use and timing of electricity consumption and its relationship with household activities. The data and the analytical tools developed by METER will provide much needed insights into the timing of electricity uses, which can underpin a wide range of future research priorities. Among them are emerging energy system balancing challenges and broader policy challenges relying on statistically robust information about the relationship between energy use, demographics, lifestyles and their transitions over time. Findings and insights from METER trials will become publicly available as part of a public outreach campaign, including interactive online tools to explore how Britain uses its electricity and what the public can do to support the transition towards a lower carbon future.

Around 80% of the UK population lives in urban areas, with cities being responsible for about 70% of UK energy use. As a consequence, the importance of cities in tackling key energy and environmental targets is increasingly being recognised. However, meeting these targets will require much of the urban infrastructure to be adapted and renewed to meet the increasing demands for energy services from city residents, while making the transition to a low-carbon economy. Two key challenges for urban infrastructure are: (i) meeting the expected increase in demand for (low carbon) electricity (including new sources of demand for heat and transport), while integrating a variety of (often variable) renewable supply options (including building integrated PV and wind systems) and (ii) increasing the proportion of low carbon heat (and potentially coolth) supply to homes and offices, with likely sources of low carbon heat including air source heat pumps and combined heat and power and district heating schemes using biomass and waste heat. Various forms of decentralised electricity and heat storage could play an important role in meeting these challenges through helping to match supply and demand over periods from seconds to days, maximising the utilisation of existing and new infrastructure, providing links between heat and electricity systems so allowing trade-offs between the two and ensuring secure energy supplies. However, we currently have a poor understanding of the optimal deployment configurations and applications for decentralised electricity and heat storage within the urban environment, any changes to the policy and regulatory environment that would be needed to remove barriers to their deployment, the business models and revenue streams that might make a commercial proposition and the public attitudes to the deployment of different types of storage. This project will use a variety of tools and methods, including technology validation, techno-economic modelling, innovation studies and public attitude surveys, to address specific barriers to the deployment of city-scale energy storage and demonstrate these methods and tools through a number of case studies analysing opportunities for energy storage deployment in the cities of Birmingham and Leeds. The novelty and adventure of our approach can be found both within the individual work packages and in the way that the findings are integrated together and applied in the case studies. So for example, our techno-economic modelling will consider specific (rather than generic) distributed energy storage technologies based on validated data from laboratory and field trials and not idealised data from the literature; our work on policy, regulatory and business models will draw on the real-world experience of our project partners in trying to make a business from operating distributed energy storage in current and likely future market conditions and our work on public attitudes will be the first study of its kind in the UK to examine distributed energy storage.

: Consumer spending on energy increased by 55% by 2012, compared to a decade earlier (ONS, 2014), despite falling energy use (largely in response to price hikes between 2004 and 2009) increased energy efficiency and warmer winters (ONS, 2014; DECC, 2015c). By 2011, energy expenditure constituted around 16% of total spending for the lowest decile of the income distribution, partway returning to the peaks (20%) of the 1980s (IFS, 2014). Although fuel poverty has dropped to 10.6% (in 2014) since the financial crisis (DECC, 2016), high energy prices continue to affect fuel poor and vulnerable consumers the most, causing financial anxiety and uncomfortable living conditions. Our research proposal seeks to investigate why flexibility, functionality and fairness in energy supply systems are unattainable in the traditional 'one-size-fits-all' approach adopted by incumbent energy suppliers. We therefore seek to explore how new and emerging business models can provide these services to all consumers and particularly how technological developments in the industry can be harnessed to address the needs of low-income, fuel poor and vulnerable consumers. Our project will inform key stakeholders and policymakers by helping them to identify the limitations of traditional business models of energy supply and helping to characterise the required features of innovative forms of transaction necessary to support the transition towards a low-carbon, decentralised energy system. Through this project we will build on this foundation by establishing a network of researchers, policymakers, industry and other stakeholders to enhance our understanding of how innovative energy services, community schemes, contractual arrangements and transactions can be used to support the needs of vulnerable energy consumers. Our ultimate goal is to create links between consumer bodies, industrial and political actors in order support a fair and welfare-enhancing transition to a low carbon UK energy system.

The UK faces a challenge of providing an energy system that is secure, sustainable and affordable. The cost of upgrading the power infrastructure is estimated to be £200bn using a centralised energy generation model. We believe that the Buildings as Power Stations concept can create a whole new manufacturing and business opportunity and dramatically reduce the investment required to create a secure future for the next generation. Even reducing the power infrastructure investment by 10% represents a £20bn UK opportunity which is mirrored across the developed world. So far on our journey we have had substantial impact and SPECIFIC is a key component to ensure commercialisation of these disruptive technologies principally though leadership of demonstration of new technology in the built environment. Research leadership and excellence is backed up by the publishing of 149 papers, international invited conference presentations and an expanding portfolio of 29 patents. A network of over 52 early adopter industrial partners, spanning both large corporates through to a selection of fast moving and innovative SMEs has also been grown. Where no company or market yet exists we have elected to spin two companies out. Alongside this, world class facilities have been created for large scale research and demonstration of product manufacture, including three pilot lines co-located with world class scientific research instrumentation. The opening of the Solcer Demonstration house in July this year is a key milestone; with colleagues at the Welsh School of Architecture (Cardiff) and the construction supply chain, this 'Active House' uses EXISTING technology harnessed in a unique way to generate up to twice as much energy as it uses. Combining solar electric and thermal generation and storage systems the house is globally unique and with a construction cost of under £150k it is affordable. The journey into the next decade brings both challenge and opportunity. We intend to build on the success of the first four years and to deliver critical new technologies to market, including printed photovoltaics at half the current commercial Si cost, safer building scale aqueous batteries delivering the opportunity to time shift renewable generation to demand, and solar thermal integrated storage solutions which create Active Buildings that do not require gas heating. Each of these sectors alone represent a billion pound opportunity and together they create a compelling case for a paradigm shift in our energy matrix from centralised generation and grid distribution to a model of distributed energy generation. This is disruptive technology so accurate market assessment is challenging. However, considering domestic new build in isolation, with 145,000 new UK homes built in 2014 and assuming an average £125k construction cost (proved through the Solcer House project) this translates to a >£1.8bn annual domestic new build opportunity if only 10% of new homes use the Buildings as Powerstations concept. Given it is affordable, environmentally friendly and offers building owners an additional income stream this projection is conservative. The opportunity in retrofit is even larger as is that in commercial and industrial buildings. The associated manufacturing opportunity will create 5000 jobs in the construction supply chain and give the UK, centred in Wales, a 'once in a lifetime opportunity' to lead the world using technology invented, developed, proven and manufactured here. Wales and the UK can be a beacon of leadership for developed and developing nations alike in a new industrial revolution.