Lowering bills, cutting carbon
Start your journey to a cheaper, lower carbon, more comfortable home. Register for an energy assessment using the form below.
In partnership with Sky
Use the form below to request your free home energy assessment, or jump to our frequently asked questions.
• Why get a home energy assessment?
• Why this home energy assessment?
• What happens during the assessment?
• Will the assessor need to do any work on my home?
• What documents will I need to provide?
• Who carries out the assessment?
• How much could improving the energy performance of my home save me?
• Why do you ask me for access to my smart meter data?
• I don’t own my property, can I still have an assessment?
Whether you want to reduce your energy bills, cut your carbon emissions, or improve the comfort of your home, investing how you heat, cool and power your home can deliver big rewards. But the range of solutions available is bewildering and with the media full of horror stories, how do you know where to start, or what might be right for your home? Our home energy assessments are designed to do just that, giving you a sense of which measures might be most suitable, and an idea of their likely impacts.
For most homeowners, the starting point for understanding the energy performance of your home is an ‘Energy Performance Certificate‘ (EPC). EPCs use a standard approach to compare different types of home on a like for like basis.
To be able to compare different homes in this way, EPCs have to assume that all homes are used in the same way. But two families with different habits can use very different amounts of energy living in the same home. That means EPCs work less well when you’re trying to make decisions about how to improve the performance of your property.
Our home energy reports translate the data collected through a standard EPC assessment into something meaningful. They:
• Are based upon real world energy consumption (rather than an estimate based on how big your home is);
• Take into account measures that may already have been installed, even if you don’t have documentation to prove that;
• Use current energy prices (rather than historic prices);
• Assume you’ll install good quality products (rather than assuming a worst case when calculating potential improvements); and
• Take into account factors like inflation and the potential impact on the value of your home when calculating payback periods.
Unlike EPCs, we also provide detailed explanations of the recommended technologies and how they interact with one another, so you can make informed decisions and feel confident moving forward with any improvements.
And best of all, since you still need an EPC if you sell or rent your home, we’ll file a standard EPC for you too, saving you up to £100 should you need one in future!
The first 50 assessments are free for Sky employee competition winners.
Once you’ve registered interest using the form above, we’ll get in touch to arrange a date and time for your assessment. The length of the visit depends on the size of the home, but for a typical home it’s likely to take about an hour. The assessor may need access to your loft space if you have one, and will need to see inside every room to understand the size and make-up of your building. The assessor will also take photos to provide a visual reference for us when we’re producing your report, and to allow us to run quality checks.
Assessments are ‘non-invasive’, which means the assessor will not do anything that could damage your property, such as drilling into walls to establish levels of insulation. That does mean that we’re reliant upon you to inform us where improvements have been made to the building that may not be visible.
Because our assessments are ‘non-invasive’, we’re reliant upon you to tell us if any work has been done to improve the energy efficiency of the property since it was built if that work is not visible to our assessor. This most commonly includes the installation of underfloor or cavity wall insulation, extensions or loft conversions. If work has been carried out, then for us to take it into account in your formal Energy Performance Certificate (which would be used if you ever sell or rent out your home), our assessor will need to see documentary evidence of the nature of the work and the date it was carried out. Evidence could include:
• Building certificates, warranties and guarantees
• Building Control sign-off
• Official letters from an applicable Registered Social Landlord (RSL)
• Dated photos
As a guiding rule, the assessor must be confident, and able to demonstrate, that any documentation relates to the actual property being assessed and that there is no physical evidence to the contrary.
If you are unable to source appropriate documentation, then the formal EPC will need to be based on what the assessor can see. This may mean that it assumes the absence of measures you know have been installed. That’s why it’s important that you tell us about these measures anyway, so that we can take them into account in your Home Comfort Report, even if they’re excluded from your formal EPC.
We also ask you for a recent copy of your energy bill(s). That allows us to check which tariff you’re on, and get a sense of your annual energy consumption (every bill has to include an estimate of how much energy you’ll use over the course of a year based on your most recent consumption trends.
Our home energy assessments are delivered in partnership with AgilityEco, one of the country’s leading providers of energy efficiency services. They work with businesses, banks and local authorities all over the country to conduct and audit household energy assessments, so you’ll know your home comfort report is in good hands. The assessment will be carried out using one of their national network of qualified assessors. We’ll let you know the name of the assessor when we book in the assessment.
Be wary of anyone who gives you a firm figure on this without first understanding your particular home. Some homes that have had a full range of improvements report savings on their energy bills of 90% or more, while more modern homes with higher standards of insulation could see more modest savings. Remember, the money you spend on improvements now is fixed, whereas future energy costs are likely to increase with inflation.
Your energy bill will tell us how much energy your supplier thinks you use over the course of a year, but your smart meter records energy consumption every half an hour. That means that we can use it to build a much more detailed understanding of your energy use, which allows us in turn to give you better quality, more accurate insights into how you could improve your home. For example, by understanding how your energy use varies through the day (see below), we can start to understand how much of the output from solar panels you might be able to use, and how much would be surplus, which could either be ‘exported’ to the grid or stored in a battery for use at other times of day.
Whether you rent your property or reside with your family, you remain eligible for a home energy assessment, as long as you are employed by Sky and apply using your Sky email address. Nevertheless, it is advisable to seek the homeowner’s permission before proceeding with the assessment.
