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Smart Energy Research Lab Stats Report 2 Published
18 Apr 2024
A new report from the EPSRC-funded research consortium, the Smart Energy Research Lab (SERL) marks a major milestone in their work to enable UK researchers to benefit from the granular electric and gas consumption data now available via smart meters.
The SERL project delivered its primary objective of providing access to high resolution, pseudo-anonymized domestic smart meter data to accredited UK researchers via a secure lab environment in August 2020 when the first edition of the SERL Observatory dataset was made available (the fourth edition was published in April 2022).
The SERL Stats report – subtitled ‘Variation in annual, seasonal, and diurnal gas and electricity use with weather, building and occupant characteristics’ – is a key deliverable of the project and is the first time that aggregated SERL statistics have been publicly available. The SERL Stats report, along with the accompanying statistical dataset, will provide a more accessible dataset and analyses to a wider range of stakeholders including academic researchers, central and local government organisations, NGOs, industry and many other potential users.
The report describes domestic gas and electricity energy use in Great Britain in 2021 based on data from the SERL Observatory panel, which consists of smart meter and contextual data from approximately 13,000 homes that are broadly representative of the GB population in terms of region and Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) quintile.
This data is unique in terms of demonstrating the seasonal and diurnal (within-day) variation of gas and electricity use in British dwellings and how it varies with region, external temperature, occupancy, local deprivation (as measured by Index of Multiple Deprivation), building characteristics (e.g. size, age, type), EPC, heating system, and presence of solar panels (PV) and electric vehicles (EV).
A key finding of the report is that the figures produced are consistent with other national datasets such as the National Energy Efficiency Data-Framework (NEED). This gives confidence that SERL is representative of GB energy use and so fulfils its primary objective of providing a useful evidence base for energy researchers.
This report is intended to be the first in a regular series of reports, analyses and aggregated statistics using SERL Observatory data, which the team hope will be of interest to academics, government, NGOs and commercial organisations. Accompanying aggregated statistical tables and datasets related to the report will be released soon.
The results reported are likely to generate many questions and debate among energy researchers which the SERL team welcome. It is hoped that the document will encourage researchers to apply to access the full SERL Observatory dataset. Full details of the SERL dataset and how to apply are available on the SERL website Feedback on the report to info@serl.ac.uk
University College London (lead), Cardiff University, University of Edinburgh, University of Essex, Leeds Beckett University, Loughborough University, Southampton University, Energy Saving Trust.