Energy Performance Certificate (EPC)

There are more than one way for consumers to save energy. They can save energy by using less energy, reducing the n.o. appliances or turning things off. They can also use energy more efficiently by improving their home. A common way to measure a homes energy efficiency is through an Energy Performance Certificate or EPC. EPCs are used to measure energy efficiency on individual appliances such as TVs, fridges and more but can also be applied to buildings to determine how efficiently a house uses energy which is determined through an Energy Performance Certificate Score.

Providing an EPC score or a home can help end users understand if they live in a home that uses energy inefficiently, help them understand what the benefits of an improved EPC score could mean and inspire them to take action to improve it.

Eliq has the capability to provide an Actual or an Estimated EPC score for homes by accessing publicly available EPC data or through a model that estimates a homes EPC score based on data from a Home Profile and EPCs from other homes.

How does it work?

For each Home (Location) in the Eliq Platform, it is possible to get an Energy Performance Certification score and to present these to the end user. If there is an actual, valid EPC for the Location, that will be returned. If not, an estimated EPC will be returned through the API.

API

The Insights API Endpoint Get Location/{locationId}/epc-rating is what is used to request and return EPC data.

Actual EPC score

If there is an Actual EPC score that is valid ,for the requested Location then this will be returned. The requested Location must have detailed enough location details (address and postcode) in the Eliq Platform to be able to determine that the stored EPC score correlates to the requested homes physical location.

If there is no Actual EPC score available or if the Location does not have detailed enough location details (e.g, only a post code) then an estimated EPC will be returned instead.

Estimated EPC score – Algorithm

The trained EPC model uses home profile inputs (e.g. house type) as well as location related inputs (eg. longitude and latitude) to generate an estimated EPC rating as a number between 1 – 100. The rating is mapped towards the correlating EPC score letter (A-G) and returned as a result through the API.

If there is data missing for the Locations Home Profile or if there isn’t any support for the country in which the Location is located in, errors with details about what is wrong will be returned as a result instead.

Requirements

Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) are only available for support countries and for Locations in the country who either have an Actual EPC or enough Home Profile data to be able to generate en Estimated EPC. Details on the requirements can be seen below

Supported Location Profile Types

Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) are only available for residential homes (Locations with residential Profile Types). For more information about Location Profile Types, please visit the Location Profile article

Supported Countries

EPCs are currently supported in Great Britain (GB) and the countries listed below. More countries will be supported.

• England
• Wales
• Scotland
• Northern Ireland (estimated EPCs only)

Requirements – Actual EPC

In order for an Actual EPC to be returned for a requested Location, the following requirements must be met.

• The Location must exist in the Eliq Platform.
• A valid EPC must exist in the Eliq Platform, ingested from the countries database of EPC certificates.
• The Locations location data must be granular enough to map the physical location of the house to the corresponding EPC certificate.

Requirements – Estimated EPC

In order for an Estimated EPC to be returned for a requested Location, the following requirements must be met.

• The Location must exist in the Eliq Platform.
• The Location must be a residential home.
• The Location must have the required Eliq Home Profile Properties filled in
  • Mandatory Profile Properties
    • bedrooms – Determines the size of the home.
    • heating_type_primary – Describes the kind of heating system the house has.
    • house_type – Describes if the house is a detached house, town house, apartment or similar.
    • property_age – A date range describing when the home was built.
      
  • Optional Home Profile Properties
    • solar_installed – A value determining if the home has Solar Panels or not and the kW capacity of the PV system

The above listed Home Profile Properties are requirements for Great Britain (GB). Other countries will have other required and optional Home Profile Properties.

API Reference Documentation

Detailed information on how to request Energy Performance Certificates including API requests, responses and possible errors can be found in the API Reference Documentation for the Energy Performance Certificate endpoint.

Use Cases

Below are a few use cases describing how to efficiently present EPC to end users in an app

EPC in “your home” overview

Showing an EPC score in the context of other important insights about the end users home makes it easy to get an overview of the most important insights for a home, including EPC. An end user can decide to learn more about EPCs by clicking on an info-icon along with other actions such as updating the home profile or digging into other insights.

Missing Home Profile Data

If there is no Actual EPC and not enough Home Profile data to create an estimated EPC, or if there is some other error, it is recommended that this is clearly presented to the end user together with information on how and where to add more details necessary for an estimated EPC.