Efficient Electric Homes Reducing CO2
One of Jigsaw’s main goals is to reduce the amount of pollution and wasted energy produced by our homes. We are working towards zero CO2, zero waste, high-efficiency heating inline with The Future Home Standards, 2019
Jigsaw is a family-owned business. We are a team of professionals who care about providing an excellent British manufactured infrared heater with a first-class finish. Our goal is to help modernise the way every building is heated.
At Jigsaw Solutions, we believe that the future of heating any building efficiently will be with infrared. Our products are highly efficient, fully controllable and market-leading in their design and production.
We are sure that there will be a Jigsaw product to suit your environment. The demand for your heating could also be met by combining solar power or other renewable energy sources.
One of our main goals is to reduce the amount of pollution and wasted energy produced by our homes. We are working towards zero CO2, zero waste, high-efficiency heating inline with The Future Home Standards, 2019.
As part of our commitment to this we use products that are the most efficient on the market, have long working lives and ones that can also be recycled.
Jigsaw are combining a number of materials and manufacturing techniques to produce our new heating system. Jigsaw Infrared currently have two main products that are on the market that have been manufactured by us.
Our new heating mats for our glass panels are UK manufactured and can be designed to fit a wide variety of our equipment and other applications. The mats have never been used in a heating application before and are proving to be efficient and practical.
The mats are extremely efficient and produce infrared heat that warms the fabric of the building and the people within the space. This means that the air does not need to be warm before you feel the heat in the room. Reducing energy bills and CO2 dramatically.
What is the need for Innovation and how does it benefit society?
An energy monitoring system would be ideally installed to show the homeowner how to set the heating efficiently.
We are in talks with Npower to be able to provide our panels as an energy efficient alternative to other electric forms of heating.
The efficiency of the our infrared heaters is 100%. Any energy that is put in to the heater comes out as heat.
We are developing relationships with Solar Panel installers to be able to offer off grid installations.
Is Infrared Heating for the Consumer or Commercial Property?
Jigsaw is developing a range of products that can be used in domestic and commercial properties. The current glass and Aluminium infrared heater ranges are being used in homes, offices, rental properties, showrooms, apartments, dance studio, churches, religious buildings, schools, swimming pools etc.
The development of our product ranges will move into higher power units to provide heating for large open spaces and industrial units.
The benefits of infrared heat mean that we only need to put or use heat where it is needed. This again reduces carbon emissions and energy bills.
The products can work alone or together. An installation can be one panel or a whole property. This can be done at stages and very easily, with the correct electrical knowledge.
The panels are designed to be installed between 20-40mins depending on the wiring that is available. The control device that we supply can be installed either wired or wirelessly allowing for a cleaner, simpler installation.
The products are available today and they can be saving CO2 immediately. We have initial feedback from a developing customer base stating they are saving money on their energy bills whilst having a cleaner, more comfortable heated home. A product that is also a lot better to look at than the usual radiator.
Clients who installed our heating system and 10kW of solar panels and battery storage in Exeter state that their “building does not have much of an energy bill at all.” Their barn conversion uses good levels of insulation to retain the heat in the building. They also noted that the upstairs of the building did not need heating from late February as the heat from the downstairs was more than enough to warm the bedrooms.
We know that we can build a property which can be heated completely off grid and by clean energy sources. We need the support to identify this in testing and the combination of products to make this viable.
The retrofit market is huge and the opportunities are massive. Decarbonising properties at a rate of 20,000 per week (Energy Technologies Institute, 2015) is required to meet the Governments 2050 Net Zero plans.
With time and development we will be able to offer a collaborative programme of decarbonising homes in the UK. A supportive Government of this programme will only benefit the people. These are people who need a healthy, clean and warm home. One that doesn’t cost the earth to run.
We have high ambitions for our products that we have and ones that are in early development stages. We have distributors in Ireland, Poland, Estonia, Sweden, Slovenia, New Zealand and potentially the US.
In the first year of our new manufactured products we are planning to manufacture more than10,000 units of various wattages. In year two, we are confident that the sales and growing export market should grow that to 100,000 units per year. The glass infrared panels will be around 25% of the total number of Aluminium panels sold.
With further testing we will be able to provide a full report. 14% of all CO2 is produced by heating our homes. The possibility is that we could halve this number with efficient heating panels alone (For properties that are using electric heating already).
But, the heating product is but a part of the whole. The combination of other manufacturers and installers of energy efficient equipment will only add to this and reduce it further. With renewable sources in place I believe that this number could be reduced from 14% to 5%.
Insulating older properties properly will ensure that the energy to heat the home will further decrease. The potential for green heat energy is becoming more apparent as energy firms supplying more electricity from renewable sources such as wind and solar.
The market for electric heating is forecast to grow as we get closer to the recommended cut off of gas to new properties by 2025. Our business has seen a large proportion of new build clients already move to electric heating instead of gas to prepare for the 2025 switch off.
The variations of the products mean that they can be a simple clean white panel, RAL coloured panel, Mirror heater, glass coloured heater. All available in any size or shape. There is a massive market for commercial and domestic clients due to just these initial products.
The Government’s Future Homes Standard clearly states that Low Carbon Heating will be a standard requirement in all domestic and commercial premises from 2025. It also recognises that, in the interim period, all new homes should be tasked with installing such heating from 2020. The report states “there is an opportunity to start to establish a mass market solution for low carbon heating with new build properties and are using the introduction of the Future Homes Strategy in 2025 to facilitate this.”
The biggest challenge comes from reducing the carbon emissions from heating our homes which makes up 14% of the UK’s carbon footprint.
Facts and Figures:
- 4,000,000 off of the Gas Grid in the UK currently and using expensive and carbon intensive forms of heating with an estimated market value of £14bn.
- A further 20,000,000 homes that will need to comply to new regulations with an estimated retrofit market value of £70bn.
- 1,000,000 gas boilers installed every year estimated value £6bn per year.
- 300,000 new homes per annum pledged by the UK Government as part of the Carbon.
- Emissions Policy With an estimated annual value of £1bn per year.
- Strategies in place at Central and Local government levels demand a huge number of new homes be built each year.
- 100,000 new council homes per year under discussion estimated annual value of £350m per year. Coupled with this is the carbon reduction strategy outlined in the CGS report which will see all new homes being built without fossil fuel heating by 2030 and all houses in the UK by 2050.
As team we specialise in design, infrared heating, manufacturing (Partnership companies with over 80 years of manufacturing experience between them) and sales. We are moving in to the testing and marketing of the products to the wider market. We are involving electrical product designers and specialist manufacturers to push the boundaries of what we can achieve with infrared.
Jigsaw are using our connections at the University of Birmingham and have enrolled our business on to the Accelerating Thermal Energy Technology Adoption (ATETA) programme. “ATETA aims to promote research and innovation in the adoption of zero carbon energy technologies for SME’s that are active in the Black Country, Coventry and Warwickshire and the Greater Birmingham and Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership Areas.”
The network and academic studies that we are in the early stages of developing are helping us improve and scale our products. We are ambitious and are in investigating a way to develop a thermostat and app system that could be able to control every aspect of heating, cooling, air circulation and hot water via Mixergy. We have been trialing Mixergy on a number of installations with some fantastic results.
My personal vision of the future home is one that is built from sustainable sources, passive, controllable and reliant on renewable and clean energy sources (Solar, wind and battery). By having connections with these builders, providers and installers we will be able to prove the goals that we have for a clean energy home.
Our team and business are growing each year. The partnerships that we have with our manufacturing companies has seen us move from a staff of four to a large expanded partnership of over forty. The resources that this has provided us has helped us grow the initial product range. We do need product development, electrical product engineers and test facilities to aid this growth further.
When we are considering the growth of the market for electric heating we will need specialists in trade and export to up-skill our staff on negotiation and differences in moving products from country to country.
At present, we are a growing team with a want to develop our products and put them to market. The family business was started over a kitchen table on the basis of being able to solve a heating problem of providing energy efficient products for a “normal” family home. We did not realise then what we had really started.