zero carbon homes
OVO Smart Home
OVO Smart Home

Our Zero Carbon Home trial

Next on the list: sharing our insights

We’re no longer accepting new registrations as we’re now moving to the next exciting phase: gathering carbon-kicking insights.

We can’t wait to share them with you.

What's the Zero Carbon Home trial?

The way we use energy at home plays a big role in how we tackle the climate crisis. Just heating up homes makes for the largest single source of carbon emissions in the UK – over 15%2.

To change that, we want to show that heating homes with smart electric central heating powered by renewable electricity is a practical, low-cost solution.

By bringing low-carbon tech into your home, you can warm it up with cheap renewable energy and store heat at off-peak times, and release it whenever you need it.

Time for net zero carbon homes.

The smart tech going into your home

You’ll get this brand-new heating system worth up to £15,000 installed in your home – for free:

Ecodan air source heat pumps

Ecodan air source heat pumps from Mitsubishi

Ideal from small flats to large, detached houses alike, Mitsubishi Electric’s Ecodan air source heat pumps are the renewable, low-carbon alternative to traditional, high-carbon heating systems. Using only water and electrical connections to operate, they bring super-efficient, sustainable heating and hot water to your home, all year round.

Sunamp’s UniQ thermal battery

Sunamp’s UniQ thermal battery

Sunamp’s products use something called ‘phase change materials’ (PCM) to store and release a lot of heat quickly to help warm things up or cool them down. For our trial, the thermal batteries will heat the water flowing through it, warming up your home.

Kaluza’s intelligent energy platform

Connectivity to Kaluza’s intelligent energy platform

Thanks to their cloud-based system, Kaluza adds a layer of control to your heating and hot water devices – optimising them for maximum efficiency, lower running costs and reduced carbon intensity. All this, while having zero impact on the comfort of your home.

Tado smart thermostat

A Tado smart thermostat

With this, you can set your ideal temperature when you're at home, and if no one’s in? The Tado app will give you a heads-up to turn the heat off, so you can save money and energy.

More about our Smart Home tech

smart home tech

How smart home tech can add value to your home

Improving the energy efficiency of your house can add more than £16,000 to the sale price of the average UK house.

Find out more
Green Homes Grant

The Green Homes Grant

Find out everything you need to know about how to get up to £5000 of home energy-improving vouchers with the Green Homes Grant.

Find out more
Zero carbon central heating

Zero carbon central heating, our pioneering new trial

To kick the carbon out of our central heating we’re installing a low carbon heating solution in 250 households in the south east.

Find out more

Any questions?

They’re an intelligent grid tech company, part of the OVO Group, who are leading the digital transformation of the electricity system. Their mission? To connect all devices to a smart zero-carbon grid, and help make the global transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

Meet Kaluza.

Sunamp delivers market-leading thermal energy storage to homes, businesses and communities around the world. Efficiency is what they go for.

Meet Sumamp.

They lead the UK’s domestic heat pump market with products like their multi award-winning Ultra Quiet Ecodan air source heat pump. Originally founded in 1921, the company has almost 100 years of experience in providing reliable, high quality commercial and domestic products to people all over the world.

Meet Mitsubishi Electric.

Yes. Not with OVO yet? We’ll be happy to have you.

Once with us, you’ll need to have a smart meter. If you haven’t got one already, go here to book yours - we'll check if you could get one installed.

It depends what fuel you use to heat up your home and hot water. If it’s gas, your gas use will go down, and your electricity use will go up. If it’s electricity (so if you have things like electric storage heaters or on-peak electric heating), your electricity use will stay about the same as before.

On top of this, you’ll also be able to control your heating and hot water, and use them only when you need them.

You’ll get the heating system for free and OVO’s smart meter (should you need one). You’ll only need to pay for your gas and electricity use, as usual.

If you decide to leave the trial before it ends, you may be charged for the cost of the heating system – the same applies if it gets damaged or lost. For more info, check out the full terms.

In case you want to go for a different type of heating system after we’ve installed this for you, it’ll be at your own cost.

Great news! The heating system is yours to keep – for free.

Besides your overall energy use, we’ll also look at how much heating, power and battery you need to warm up your home. By understanding how these elements interact with each other, we’ll be able to prepare and optimise these types of electric heating systems to be better for our members’ home, their bills and the planet.

We and our partners may need to share your data between us to make sure your trial runs smoothly. Find more on this.

It’s planned to end in March 2021, but it may get extended – we’ll let you know if it does.

By all means! This trial is part of the government's Low Carbon Heating Technology initiative. Just go here to learn more.

1Eligibility criteria applies, see our terms and conditionsfor details.

2UK Housing: Fit for the future?

3Calculation based on multiplying the carbon intensity of an average boiler by the KWh used in an average household.

4According to theEPA, a tree sequesters 0.06 tonnes or 60 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent over the course of 10 years. To calculate the yearly carbon sequestered, we divided the total saving by 10.

Terms and conditions

Participation in the Zero Carbon Home Trial is subject to eligibility and terms apply. For eligibility criteria and trial terms and conditions see www.ovoenergy.com/terms/zero-carbon-homes

If you are eligible for this trial we may ask you to participate in research. For more information see www.ovoenergy.com/smart-home-heat/zero-carbon-homes/research

For Kaluza terms and conditions see www.kaluza.com/terms-conditions

For terms and conditions relating to the MELCloud see www.melcloud.com/termsandconditions

For terms and conditions relating to the Sunamp Thermal Battery see www.sunamp.com/terms-and-conditions

For terms and conditions relating to the Tado Smart Thermostat and App see www.tado.com/gb/terms-and-conditions