Skip to main content

Energy Saving TrustWhat is the Dynamic Engine?

Dynamic Engine is an industry leading domestic energy model capable of simulating individual properties in detail and identify the optimum package of improvements, helping people to understand energy use in their home, ways to reduce their energy consumption and meet their needs from renewables.

Only Dynamic Engine is capable of modelling all possible combinations of energy saving improvements holistically, exploring potentially millions of scenarios to capture the interplay of all measures for best possible accuracy: as insulation is added heating load reduces, as lighting becomes more efficient thermal gains drop so more space heating is required and so the requirements of a new efficient boiler or heat-pump are defined.

This unique ability allows DE to work to customer budgets and goals, identifying the package to deliver a new purchaser the best long-term cost or carbon savings for their individual budget or the most cost-effective package to deliver an improved EPC rating for example.

To ensure flexibility and accessibility, Dynamic Engine uses Energy Saving Trust’s extensive reference data to ‘fill in the gaps’ where the exact size, characteristics or details of a property aren’t known. Provide Dynamic Engine with the decade a property was built, whether it’s a house or flat, attached or semi-detached and how many bedrooms and it can estimate the rest to give a sound plan for investment decisions. If more is known, such as details about the windows or the heating system then this extra information can be used to refine the model. If actual fuel bills are available, then these too can be utilised to calibrate and refine saving estimates to fully tailor advise for each household.

In terms of technology, Dynamic Engine is a secure, high-capacity enterprise solution ready to drive B2C and B2B commercial services and tools of any scale. In its simplest form, we offer Dynamic Engine as a service via API to support third-party solutions, we also offer a full bespoke application development and hosting services to provide Dynamic Engine powered whole solutions, plug-in tools, apps and business system integration as required.

Features summary

  • Whole building model. Comprehensive heat-flow model for the building to ensure accuracy for each individual household.
  • Flexibility and inference. Able to work at any level with users, making use of as much information on their home as they are able to provide and helping to fill in the gaps to build the best possible picture of the building.
  • Unique Improvements model. Fully models the impact of all energy saving measures rather than using reference savings for a limited number of ‘typical’ properties.
  • Combining measures. When multiple measures are installed, some will impact the savings of others which can lead to unrealistic predictions in systems where savings are simply added together. Through its unique approach, Dynamic Engine is able to model these interactions and provide accurate total savings for packages of measures.
  • Finding the best combination. Dynamic Engine makes millions of calculations each time a saving plan is generated, testing all possible combinations of measures and identify the optimum package of improvements.
  • Budgets and goals. With everything being calculated ‘live’ for each property, budgets and objectives such as improved EPC rating can be set and the optimum package of improvements to meet these will be identified.
  • Occupancy and bill calibration. To finalise accuracy, savings and costs can be adjusted to reflect current fuel use from bills and household characteristics to ensure that all advice is completely tailored for each user.