Green Tech Matters feat. Cepro

How can we build new homes that are clean, all-electric, and cheaper to build and run?

In this Green Tech Matters article we had a chat with Damon Rand about why he helped start Cepro, how they’re making clean energy affordable for new homes, and why now is the moment to scale. From smart grids to solving the net zero challenge.

Cepro develops and operates residential smart grids for new UK homes, combining solar, battery storage, and EV charging. Its vision is to decarbonise and decentralise home energy, and to help housebuilders deliver all-electric, future-proof homes at lower cost.

Why did you start Cepro?

About fifteen years ago, I saw that the underlying value of clean technology was starting to materialise. I was working as a coder for banks and large organisations delivering solutions for in-house customers so I was familiar with getting under the hood of a technology. I had also completed a masters degree in environmental science which gave me an appreciation of the urgency around climate change.

And to me, it seemed very obvious when you really studied the numbers that a huge shift to renewables was coming, driven purely by the value of the technology. But it was also clear that laypeople like property owners or developers would have trouble raising the capital to invest to benefit on their own.

I saw a gap to buy low-cost clean tech and deploy it into sites, on behalf of those property owners who didn’t have the capital or weren’t willing to invest it in the assets.

So I helped found Cepro so we could start bridging the gap between the advent of clean technology and its operationalisation. Now we’re looking to scale up our work and ensure that all homes are powered by affordable, clean energy.

What does Cepro do?

Cepro has established a model that finances and installs solar panels and batteries as part of smart grids on new-build properties, then manages the system for resident customers. Our goal is to eliminate the major hurdles house builders face in adopting clean energy and help drive the UK’s transition away from fossil fuels. Although the UK is legally committed to phasing out fossil fuel use by 2050, residential energy, which contributes 23% of national emissions, remains a significant challenge.

Our approach is win-win for everyone involved.

For house builders, it reduces upfront costs, eases pressure on the national grid, which helps speed up project timelines, and supports Scope 3 carbon reductions.

For homeowners and occupiers, they can avoid fossil fuel emissions and receive a guaranteed minimum 15% lifetime discount on energy costs, compared to grid rates.

Why is Cepro a pioneer?

If you think about rooftop solar, battery storage, EV chargers and heat pumps, they’re all counted as renewables or clean technology. But each of them is a relatively large investment and each has reasonably long payback times – anywhere between five and fifteen years. But if you bring all that equipment together, for example in new build housing, you have the opportunity to install it all in one go. It’s more affordable to install it when the houses are being built, with the existing construction crews and as part of the original planning.

Cepro is a pioneer because we’re integrating all of that technology together with smart software and metering technology – what we refer to as a ‘smart grid’. When you do that, put the renewables together on a site and have the components talk to each other seamlessly and smoothly, you get much greater returns and shorter payback periods on all that equipment.

Right now, this install and management requires a higher level of expertise which is also what Cepro offers.

How are you lowering the cost of installing renewables for house builders?

Cepro considers house builders as our partners, rather than just a customer. They don’t pay us directly. Instead, we provide funding for the smart grid, so house builders save money on their overall costs because we’re paying for something that they would otherwise have installed themselves.

We say ‘net zero homes at net zero cost’ for the house builder. And because these are infrastructure projects, we can raise the funding through infrastructure investors who are looking to deploy their capital. So far, they’ve just had solar farms and wind farms to deploy into in the past – and we’re offering the same, it just happens to be across housing estates rather than fields!

Why now?

It’s a great question. Like I said, we’ve seen the underlying value of clean tech for years, and the need for it. But why are we not seeing solar on the roofs of all new builds? Why are homes still being built with gas boilers? The UK government has committed to net zero emissions by 2050, and progress has been slow to say the least.

Thankfully, there have been some big regulatory changes. The UK government has now confirmed that housebuilders need to electrify heating and all new homes need to be built with solar by 2027. And, Ofgem has just raised the lower ‘Transmission Impact Assessment’ threshold from 1MW to 5MW for distributed generation projects in England and Wales. This change will have significant – and very positive – implications for distributed battery developers and operators like us. Previously, we had worked below this threshold and avoided TIAs, but with the lower threshold raised, it opens up new development opportunities.

As each of these implementation challenges are tackled, we can really see Cepro’s future – and the future of decarbonised, decentralised home energy – open up in front of us. So we’re raising investment to scale and meet this challenge.

What’s next for Cepro?

We’ve been working very hard over the last five years. We’ve got two fully operational demonstration smart grids up and running, Hazelmead and Water Lilies. Both are an absolute triumph for everyone involved, and we’ve been winning awards for our innovative approach (there’s a summary on this page). Since they became fully operational at the end of 2023, we’ve been iterating those systems, tuning the batteries, seeing how they run. And at the same time, we’ve been building a pipeline of project proposals for 11,000 homes, covering all of the major house builders.

So yes, what’s next is a busy time! But it’s an exciting time. It’s going to take a lot of work for the UK to reach net zero. We’re lucky to be part of an incredible ecosystem of true innovators and together, we can do it – and at a low cost for everyone.

If you want to get involved, check out our raise.

If you’re interested in hearing more from innovative GreenTech pioneers you should join the ADLIB sponsored meetup community – Green Tech South West