Seeing double can save and make heat pump customers money

New research from Energised Futures – powered by Centrica, has created advanced and scalable modelling techniques to enable heat pumps to better support the energy grid and help households save and make money with their device.

Optimal control of heat pumps requires a complex model for how the house or building will retain or lose heat in different scenarios. Creating a reliable and scalable model is challenging due to the variety of materials, designs, and uses of each home – particularly as typical thermostats are limited in their data and insights capture.

The new techniques created by Energised Futures for Project MESH, funded by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), combined machine learning with physics-based models to predict and optimise home heating performance for both heat pumps and gas boilers, and will allow us to build a bespoke model – a digital twin – of each individual customer’s home to deliver a cost-saving and making solution for them.

This is a significant milestone in heat pump optimisation as it overcomes historical challenges of previous models requiring an element of guesswork. Whereas now, with the help of a home’s digital twin, we can deliver accurate optimisation tailored to individual needs and scenarios.

Finalised at the end of 2025, Project MESH was delivered in partnership with Mixergy. Findings from Project MESH are shaping future innovations in smart heating, including applications within project Dedalus – an EU-funded project to develop the necessary control algorithms and Information and Communication Technology infrastructure needed to deploy heat pumps in a Demand Response solution. Energised Futures is also progressing findings from Project MESH to further personalise heat pump optimisation through behavioural research.

Energised Futures – powered by Centrica, is a new in-house research and innovation incubator launched to accelerate a new energy future, and catalyse Centrica’s purpose to energise a greener, fairer future.