The Energy Demand Observatory and Laboratory (EDOL) is an £8.7m, five-year project to generate data on energy usage in UK homes and inform strategies to meet net zero targets.

The project runs until 2028 and will develop a range of innovative methods – including new approaches around AI and the Internet of Things – for monitoring the energy consumed by different appliances and the different energy-using activities that make up daily life at home.

Funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, EDOL will consist of three elements, including an ‘Observatory’ of 2000 representative UK households equipped with sensors to record energy used by occupants, their appliances, and their behaviours. The anonymised data will then be analysed by researchers to better understand patterns of energy demand in our homes.

‘Forensic’ analyses of sub-samples of homes that have novel or lesser-known forms of energy demand (for instance, smart charging of electric vehicles) will also be carried out via surveys, interviews, and in-depth monitoring.

Lastly, the project will include the creation of ‘Field laboratories’ of 100-200 households, in which policies, technologies, business models and other interventions can be tried out and compared to relevant control groups in the Observatory.

We have partnered with University College London and the University of Oxford to run EDOL, full information can be found at edol.uk and by following @UCL_Energy.