In December 2025, the National Retrofit Hub co-hosted a workshop with the Smart Data Communications Company (DCC) to explore how smart meter enabled environmental sensing (SMEES) could support a range of government objectives related to health, energy efficiency, system flexibility and supporting the most vulnerable. The government and Smart DCC1 and are keen to ensure that the infrastructure created through the smart meter roll-out is used to its full potential.
This national network could provide a secure route to transmit household temperature, humidity and other environmental data to a central point, creating new opportunities to understand how buildings actually perform in use.
We brought together a wide range of experts to explore possible applications. Participants included academics, practitioners, researchers, civil servants, public bodies, consumer advice providers, monitoring and Internet of Things specialists, sensor platform providers, data managers, and those already analysing smart meter and sensor data to assess retrofit outcomes.
There was strong enthusiasm for the opportunity. Attendees saw clear potential for SMEES to deepen understanding of existing buildings and to inform better design and planning decisions, helping retrofit programmes deliver stronger cost and carbon outcomes.
The advantages of using the DCC network were widely recognised. As infrastructure that is already paid for it is secure, operates at national scale, and does not depend on residents’ WiFi connections. It also presents an opportunity to create consistent approaches and reduce costs, provided that data access, governance, and output formats are carefully designed. As one contributor noted, this is exactly the kind of value many in the sector had hoped would emerge from the smart meter roll-out.
WHAT SMEES COULD ENABLE?
Smart DCC presented three potential use-cases for SMEES:
- Property Management and Health: allowing people like landlords to understand potential damp and mould risk, support residents underheating, or to identify overheating risk.
- In-use Performance Assessment: potentially using Smart Meter Enabled Thermal Efficiency Ratings (SMETERs)2 approach, including baselining of existing homes, better understanding the performance (ranges) of different housing archetypes, validating retrofit performance or providing useful data to homeowners to help them better manage their homes.
- Demand-side Response: measuring how different homes retain heat to understand how this can be used to support grid flexibility, and to manage when a home uses energy to best respond to grid capacity.
WHAT MUST UNDERPIN IMPLEMENTATION?
Validation, quality control and a clear understanding of accuracy were key enablers highlighted for this technology to be adopted at scale.
The conversation felt timely with the recent publication of the Warm Homes Plan, particularly considering the work DESNZ is currently progressing on SMETER validation, which will include process control to help with quality and accuracy, for example on sensor numbers and placement. Many emphasised the need to combine sensor data with surveys and in-person building checks, to spot risks that might be hidden or concealed. The Retrofit Revisit project also used building surveys, long term analysis of moisture balance and fungal screening, which helped identified damp and mould or failures that would not be visible or picked up by sensor data. These systems could be developed by conducting both types of risk assessment in parallel.
If SMEES is to support credible decision making, it must form part of a broader evidence framework that blends monitoring with professional assessment.
Participants also discussed risks openly. Poor validation could create false confidence. Weak governance could undermine trust. Data might be misused or interpreted without context. Landlords and local authorities are wary of liability. These are not reasons to step back, but they do demand careful design.
Strong governance frameworks, transparent consent, clarity about who benefits and clear rules around data use are essential. Ethical deployment will matter as much as technical accuracy.
WHAT ARE THE WIDER SYSTEM IMPLICATIONS?
If implemented well, SMEES could have implications beyond building diagnostics.
Reliable in use performance data could strengthen the evidence base presented to lenders and investors. More robust performance verification could reduce perceived risk and help unlock private finance for retrofit. That matters in a context where public funding alone will not deliver the scale required.
There is also a trust dimension. Parts of the sector have been affected by poor quality installations in the past. Transparent and consistent performance data could help rebuild confidence in retrofit outcomes.
Residents remain central to this conversation. Environmental data could help people understand how their home performs, provide evidence where issues arise and support access to remedial works or upgrades. Some participants highlighted the potential for co design or citizen science approaches, enabling residents to engage directly with monitoring in ways that feel relevant and empowering.
Over time, longer term datasets could also support research into housing related health outcomes, which often take years to emerge. Linking indoor conditions with health evidence could strengthen the case for prevention focused investment.
WHAT NEEDS TO BE CONSIDERED FOR MANAGING SCALE AND COMPLEXITY?
Many organisations are already deploying temperature and humidity sensors, mainly for damp and mould risk assessment. The next step is integration, interoperability and longer-term data collection that builds a shared evidence base rather than isolated projects.
At the same time, data overload is a genuine concern. Local authorities and landlords can feel overwhelmed by information and cautious about liability. However, there was clear interest in aggregated data that can inform pre and post retrofit performance, resident experience, health indicators and value for money.
Any future system must translate data into action. That means clear thresholds, defined responsibilities and simple decision pathways so that alerts lead to appropriate intervention. Capacity and skills at local level will be just as important as technical infrastructure.
HOW WILL THE NRH SUPPORT THIS WORK?
The NRH and SDCC continue to collaborate to explore the potential for SMEES and other smart meter data. As a next step SMART DCC will be producing a positioning paper to help further advance understanding of the opportunity. There was also broad agreement within the workshop that the next step should be to design a diverse, outcomes focused pilot. This should cover different home types and tenure models and combine sensor, resident experience and survey data. A pilot should take the opportunity to build in strong validation and QA processes and produce outputs that are easy for frontline teams and policymakers to use.
Are you already collecting environmental data on retrofit projects, or for your housing stock? Would linking this to the smart meter network support you to do more, or help overcome challenges?
Get in touch to share your experiences or for more information.
