Public Funding for Airex Technologies Ltd

AirEx has developed a demand-responsive ventilation system designed for retrofitting into existing dwellings. This is a practical solution for retrofit contractors who need to provide additional ventilation required by PAS 2035 as part of their retrofit projects and for social landlords addressing health risks to their residents from issues arising from damp and mould. Unlike other ventilation solutions on the market, our system has the advantage of providing automated ventilation only when necessary. This means that when the air quality in a home is already good, ventilation can be minimised, reducing cold airflow into the home and lowering energy consumption for households. Barriers to retrofit projects include resident acceptance and the need for project compliance with PAS2035 and other regulations. Consequently compliance of products installed in projects is crucial to avoid exposing clients to regulatory risk. This project aims to secure the necessary certifications for the components and/or the whole system, enabling confident deployment by customers to comply with the PAS2035 standards and government regulations for healthy homes.

Domestic homes are responsible for 22% of the UK's greenhouse gas emissions \[BEIS,2019\]. The majority of this originates from domestic heating, emissions from which must fall by 95% to reach the UK's 2050 net zero targets \[ESC,2019\]. At the same time, poor air quality is the largest environmental risk to public health in the UK, costing the NHS £1bn per annum \[Clean Growth Strategy, 2017; BRE, 2015\], as well as being a significant contributor to property damage in the form of damp, which costs \>£10bn per annum across the EU \[UK­CMB,2018\]. Airex has developed and is already commercialising an entirely novel building product, a smart air brick, that uses intelligent ventilation control and IoT connectivity to optimise ventilation and reduce heat loss in homes while monitoring and reporting on property condition and risks. By replacing existing air bricks across the home, Airex is proven to deliver a significant reduction on energy bills whilst maintaining healthy indoor environments. The company reliably demonstrated the performance benefits of the Airex Floorvent (the company's first product to market), which since then gained significant commercial traction and has been recognised within the Energy Performance Certificate framework. The next phase of Airex's development is to develop and validate product variants - systems to control airflow in habitable rooms. Accordingly, this project is centred on refining designs, testing, customer trials, design for manufacture and product certification for these product variants. This in turn will lead to an increased addressable market by a factor of 3, increased revenue growth potential and significantly larger environmental and social impact.

UT's has developed an intelligent air brick (AirEx) that measures temperature & humidity and regulates airflow accordingly by opening/closing embedded air-vents using IoT-enabled algorithms. By replacing existing air bricks, AirEx is proven to deliver a 10-15% reduction on energy bills whilst maintaining indoor air-exchange. AirEx has thus far been optimised for energy efficiency, but we now want to build on its capabilities as an indoor air quality (IAQ) management system. For this project, we therefore want to integrate AirEx into an existing smart-heating control system to develop the first retrofittable smart-heating and ventilation control system ("IVH" - Intelligent Heating & Ventilation") to optimise heating efficiency whilst maintaining air-exchange to improve IAQ. Phase 1 will enable us to design an integrated system with a technology partner and to develop a plan for a Phase 2 trial in conjunction with at least one key customer.

Occupants' daily activities make up 35% of the factors leading to indoor air-pollution \[UCL,2018\]. In the face of COVID-19 we are expecting people to spend much more time in their homes which has two serious knock-on effects: 1) occupants experience longer exposure to indoor pollutants, increasing the risk of respiratory illnesses; 2) Poor IAQ is linked to COPD, asthma, stroke & heart diseases -- all of which are underlying health conditions, increasing the risk of severe illness from covid-19, putting further pressure on the NHS. To address this challenge we are now developing OptimisAir: an integrated 'Indoor air quality management system' that helps Registered Social Landlords reducing their maintenance costs through automated airflow control combined with AI-based activity-recognition and nudge-techniques to reduce the root cause of poor indoor air quality. It uses IoT-enabled sensors to monitor indoor pollutants and utilises game-changing technologies (machine-learning, activity-recognition, 'nudge'/behavioural sciences) to tackle an age-old problem: poor indoor air quality, dampness and draughts in homes. The outcome of the project creates a novel, patented system at an extremely competitive cost.

Buildings in use account for 44% of greenhouse gas emissions in the UK, and while governments introduced various energy efficiency schemes to reduce carbon emissions in domestic homes, the range of products that cost-effectively address energy efficiency is extremely limited. To address this challenge, me and my team have designed and developed a patent-pending, award-winning smart home technology that saves 15% on a home's heating bills, without compromising air quality. Its smart sensors monitor and analyse environmental conditions while its cloud-based algorithms automatically regulate the airflow. As a result, AirEx improves residents' thermal comfort, ensures good air quality and is able to reduce the home's heat loss by c. 15% - with an associated 2-3 years payback. Furthermore, the real-time data AirEx provides helps Facility Managers to significantly reduce their repair & maintenance expenditures by enabling preventative maintenance (e.g. flagging up indicators of damp).

Registered Social Landlords (RSLs, 5.6m homes, EHS,2016) and private multi-property homeowners (1.9m homes, LSE,2016) spend £7.1bn/year on repair & maintenance (R&M), out of which the average cost of repair caused by damp or excess-cold varies between £4k - £7k/home resulting an enormous amount of unnecessary expenditures. This is predominantly attributed to the poor quality of data RSLs currently use to make decisions on energy and maintenance interventions, relying purely on EPCs. The pressure is increasingly high on RSLs considering recent legislation mandated 1% annual rent cut (IFS,2017), as well as the recent Duty of Care obligation to protect tenants' well-being (CareAct,2014). To address this opportunity, we are developing an "Energy & Maintenance Optimisation Platform" (EMOP) that combines real-time high-value data collected by our unique smart sensors with a wide range of existing data-sets, using our proprietary self-learning algorithms to support informed decision-making for landlords. EMOP, supported by cutting edge low-power communication network, can help landlords to undertake targeted preventative maintenance through optimising energy and refurbishment interventions.

"Buildings account for 44% of the UK's greenhouse gas emissions, with 26% linked to domestic homes (BRE, 2012), while still over 2 million people live in Fuel Poverty in England & Wales alone. While the UK government has subsidised most easy-to-treat energy efficiency measures over the last few years (e.g. ECO funding for loft or cavity wall insulation), reviews of these support schemes (ECO,2016) flagged cost-effectiveness as a key requirement. Furthermore, traditional ventilation methods in existing, older homes still rely on occupants' behaviour, risking their health, well-being and comfort. 'AirEx' is an innovative smart home technology that automatically regulates the air-flow through air-vents in the home, based on atmospheric conditions & air quality, via its cloud-based algorithm. AirEx has the potential to deliver significant savings on householders' energy bills without compromising air-quality and any unintended consequences (condensation, damp). Furthermore, the real-time valuable data collected by AirEx system in a central database allows facility managers, social landlords, multi-property owners to make informed, strategic decisions on their maintenance strategies - enables targeted preventative interventions, rather than reactive repair work. The objective of this project is to i) develop and field test a working prototype, ii) identify optimum business model for commercialisation. Our company will harness experience in building energy efficiency, in-home sensor deveopment to enter this sector."