Free batteries, proven demand: a route into the social tenant market
posted 9th October 2026
The Problem
British Gas wanted two things:
- To grow its share of the energy market.
- To test whether free smart batteries for social housing tenants would work.
Social landlords must deliver energy efficient homes. Our starting hypothesis was that free batteries would help them do this while also delivering cheaper energy to their housing customers. Social landlords would want to address fuel poverty directly and their customers would want to save money on their bills. My job was to find out how big the chance really was and what stood in the way.
My Role & Approach
As Lead Service Designer I led the discovery
- I interviewed internal stakeholders to explore opportunity and identify landlords
- I interviewed 7 landlords
- I conducted 4 surveys with social housing customers in different groups, with 110 to 250 people in each
- I mapped journeys, modelled consumption patterns and showed the landlords what the battery would look like on their property and how the service would work in practice
- I used real energy bills to show what a week with a cheaper bill looks like for a tenant
The Outcome
UPDATE THIS SECTION - how problem was refined
- The idea moved from a guess to a pilot. The pilot starts with new builds and empty homes waiting for new tenants (“voids”).
- Social tenants who qualified could save about £345 a year
- 397K households out of a 2.8 million social homes were eligible for the proposition
- Over 80% of tenants said they'd sign up, depending on the group
- 4 of 7 landlords liked the idea
The Approach, in Detail - Unpicking tenant demand
This only worked if tenants used enough electricity and would actually take part. Asking them wasn't enough. I had to show them. So I modelled and validated
- the battery on a home like theirs
- used real bills to build a “week in the life” with a cheaper bill.
A cheaper bill meant more hot showers, a warm home and more cooked meals. That's what got honest answers instead of polite ones.
Everyone thought tenants would refuse smart meters. They didn't. If the saving was big enough, they'd take one.
Not every tenant could get it. They needed to:
- use enough electricity for the saving to count
- have a battery fitted
- have a smart meter
Put those together and the number drops from 2.8 million social homes to 397,000. For those who qualify, the saving is about £345 a year.
Unpicking landlord resistance - Landlords had practical worries:
- Who fixes a battery fixed to the outside of their house?
- Would it make it harder to borrow money against the property (refinance)?
I tested how the lease could work. The battery could sit as an “unsecured asset”. In plain words: it has no legal claim on the house, so it doesn't affect the landlord's borrowing. That one finding removed a blocker that could have stopped the project before a pilot.
Landlords had a bigger worry. Energy debt is now the most common serious debt people bring to debt charities, and it's getting worse. Fuel debt isn't the landlord's job. But when a tenant can't afford to heat their home, two things follow:
- It's an ethical problem.
- The home gets damp. Damp is exactly what Awaab's Law was written to stop. (Awaab's Law makes social landlords fix damp and mould quickly.)
So landlords were asking : does this help us get ahead of a risk we already have?
What tenants said surprised landlords. Landlords had underestimated how much tenants wanted a fix. Closing that kind of gap is what research is for.
What was different
I thought legal deadlines would push landlords to move fast. Those were Awaab's Law and MEES (the minimum energy rating a rented home must meet). I was wrong. Most landlords were already on track.
The real problem started earlier:
- Tenants can't afford to heat their homes.
- The homes get damp.
- Damp triggers Awaab's Law.
- Landlords end up fixing damage after it happens.
So I changed the pitch. Not “this helps you meet a deadline” but “this helps stop the damp before it starts”. That's what landlords responded to, because it fixed the cause, not the symptom.
Closing the gap
The numbers also showed who was left out: tenants on Pre-Payment Meters, where you top up before you use energy. These are often the people who struggle most. I treated it as a design problem and proposed a debt amnesty plan to bring them in.