Tackling fuel poverty in Glasgow

TAC, energy management specialists, has been working in partnership with Glasgow Housing Association to produce a fuel poverty strategy and tackle the problem.

With an ever-increasing awareness of energy consumption in their daily lives, it is important that consumers are aware of how they can contribute towards saving energy in their homes.

The use of building controls is not an issue that individual households have to deal with on a house-by-house basis.

However, when looking at the situation from a social landlord's perspective, building controls play a vital role when controlling the energy management of a high number of properties for which local authorities are responsible.

The definition of fuel poverty is when a household needs to spend 10 per cent or more of its income to meet fuel costs.

This issue of affordable warmth in households across the country is a problem for millions of people, particularly amongst the elderly and especially during the winter months.

The national average expenditure on fuel is just below eight per cent of disposable income.

In contrast, figures for private tenants show that they spend an average 17 per cent of disposable income.

This suggests that local authorities nationwide are accountable for at least another two per cent growth in expenditure to ensure that residents do not suffer from fuel poverty in their homes.

A main cause of fuel poverty according to the Scottish Fuel Poverty Statement is poor energy efficiency of the dwelling.

Glasgow Housing Association (GHA) is the largest registered social landlord in the UK with a massive, and widely-spread, housing stock In order to tackle the problems of fuel poverty its resource must stretch across 2,500 homes in the city.

Local authorities have a vital role to play to help reduce this growing problem.

There were around 2.25 million fuel-poor households in the UK in 2002 with approximately 57 per cent of fuel used in the domestic sector contributing to space heating.

Yet a staggering amount of housing stock is still operating with either outdated or inefficient heating systems, or up-to-date systems that are being used ineffectively - drastically increasing the amount of fuel required for heating and therefore potentially wasting hundreds of pounds each year.

Gavin Holvey, UK product sales manager at TAC, energy management specialists, explains how the company is working with GHA to tackle this problem: "TAC has been working in partnership with Glasgow Housing Association for more than a decade in a bid to produce a fuel poverty strategy and tackle the problem at its root - the inefficient systems that were wasting energy and keeping fuel bills far higher than necessary.

The move was a response to the drastic increase in fuel prices in 2004, since when Scottish local authorities have been required to produce fuel poverty strategies.

"The project was a huge undertaking, yet the brief from Glasgow Housing Association was simple: to integrate all heat metering, pump management, lighting, security and lifts onto a Micronet network in order to give the energy manager a holistic view of each building's performance.

"The emphasis was on installing energy management systems that would enable secure but remote access, could be integrated with the existing systems while being able to scale up to meet future requirements, would be low maintenance for engineers and that would keep heating costs to a minimum".

Holvey continues: "The aim was to install a network that would enable real-time energy analysis to be immediately available to staff - they can be sent via email or even text messages to alert them to areas that need urgent attention.

This is invaluable for engineering problems as it reduces call-out time and costs.

Ultimately, this enables Glasgow Housing Association to take more control over its sites and provides a higher level of service to its customers, not to mention enable them to make savings on their fuel bills through more efficient management of energy.

"Another key area for focus was symptomatic of public housing stock, where existing systems are already in place and you need to take an upgrade path that is sympathetic to the customer's needs to save public money wherever possible.

With so many different systems in place in so many different buildings, it was vital to take an 'open systems' approach.

"By using the LON system and Micronet building management system TAC was able to integrate the new network with existing equipment seamlessly.

No stone was left unturned and there are even individual heating controllers in 500 homes across the city".

Holvey adds: "The partnership has been successful because both companies have the same aim of reducing energy, heating and building management costs.

In line with TAC's 'customers for life' ethos, Glasgow Housing Association has introduced a 30-year upgrade plan to replace all systems every 10 to 15 years, which will guarantee effective and efficient operations in the future.

Holvey concludes: "The savings will benefit all involved, from engineers to customers.

This major scale project has taken considerable steps to tackle head on the issue of fuel poverty and over the next few years will hopefully eliminate the problem in Scotland's largest city altogether.".

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