Portsmouth City Council

Giving the power of decision making to households

Our client

Portsmouth City Council (PCC), already a leader in energy management amongst Local Authority, has an approximate population of 250,000 and more than 84000 residential properties. Portsmouth is one of the the largest cities in Hampshire in terms of population and area.

The Challenge

PCC declared climate emergency in March 2019 and decided to take corrective step for cutting down the carbon emission level across the city. With around 84,000 residential properties in the city, PCC wanted to assist householders in the deployment of solar panels in a novel and unique way, decarbonising the city but also sparking growth in its local installer base. solar survey of the entire city was next to impossible and would have taken 4.5 years for a team of 10 members to cover entire city. To overcome this labour intensive and next to impossible task, PCC saw an opportunity in Absolar’s technology to cover the city quickly and make the data available to every household.

Our Solution

PCC & Absolar wanted to give the power of data-led decision making to local residents. With this intent, the online app Switched-on-Solar was developed, carrying out a solar survey of any residential property just by typing the post code of the property. It provides details of estimated cost saving, electricity produced and co2 savings. Our approach gave transparency and decision-making power to the end user. Switched-on-Solar was created by Absolar’s in-house software development team using LIDAR technology, satellite imagery and analysing the energy power consumption of each residential property.

The Results

A solar survey of the entire city was carried out to achieve the end results. Out of 84,217 residential properties assessed in the entire city, 36,000 were great for solar panel installation. This would save approximately £89m per year for households in fuel bills alone. Our technology identified 137,000 tonnes of carbon savings which could be achieved to help residents of Portsmouth decarbonise their properties energy supply.