The international climate emergency demands a concerted effort from businesses to help drive innovation and bring new solutions to market, especially when it comes to domestic energy use which accounts for around 40% of all carbon emissions in the UK.
Enviroheat HET shows what is possible when great minds including scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs, join together to try and tackle some of the world’s most challenging problems.
Established on the belief that cutting edge technology will be the answer to reducing energy consumption and eliminating fuel poverty, the company is bringing innovative new products to market such as the EconoRad heater and the EconoCylinder hot water cylinder, which are both highly efficient in their consumption and preservation of energy.
We spoke to Enviroheat’s Director, Luke Cronshaw, to hear more about the company and how it has been supported by Green Economy.
Tell us a little about your business?
We were founded by a group of engineers who wanted to find technological solutions for the universal challenge of rising domestic energy usage and costs.
The biggest consumers of energy in the home are heating and hot water products. Our founding engineers looked specifically at electrical heating products and tasked themselves with making improvements. They looked first at electrical heating and figured out a way to store and use energy better, essentially creating our first product, the EconoRad radiator. It’s a water-filled electric radiator, powered by our Hydro Electric Thermic (HET) technology. HET is essentially a pump, a heat exchanger and controls. It uses around 600 Watts of electricity to heat the water to 55 degrees and provides enough heat for an average domestic room – compared with other products on the market that typically have high 2kW electrical load, so it’s a huge reduction in energy demand.
How has sector specific support helped you to grow?
We worked with a low carbon sector business advisors, (Daniel Dickinson now working for the Energy Innovation Agency) performed some market research for us regarding Jersey looking into what the energy market is like over there and what opportunities there would be for very efficient and well-connected energy solutions.
As a result of this research, we identified a significant area for growth. We already engage in overseas trading with France and Europe, but looking closer to home, Jersey has been an opportunity that has directly led to just over £20,000 worth of sales of goods in our first week of working over there (as a result of securing a contract with a hotel chain).
So for us, those few hours of market research and detailed reporting to identify suitable applications for products has led to a huge win. If you’re at a stage where your business is very niche, they can also put you in touch with other similar businesses to find references of which way they have chosen to go. There’s a Marketplace of low carbon sector businesses that they can put you in touch with.
