Boldr Raises £1.7M to Manufacture Smart Heating Controls That Actually Cut Bills
October 9, 2024
Boldr, a UK cleantech hardware company, has raised £1.7 million to develop and manufacture its smart temperature control technology. The company is building an intelligent heating control system designed to reduce energy bills for homes and businesses by automating the scheduling, adjustment, and optimisation of heating systems based on actual occupancy patterns, weather conditions, and energy tariff signals — without requiring users to manually programme or manage complex controls.
Heating accounts for approximately a third of total UK energy consumption and is the largest single energy cost for most households and many businesses. Smart thermostats and heating controls have existed for over a decade, but adoption has been lower than anticipated, in part because the products available have required too much user effort to configure and maintain, and in part because the energy savings they deliver have been disappointing relative to their cost when not properly optimised. Boldr's approach focuses on solving the usability problem as the primary design challenge: a heating control that saves energy automatically, without the user needing to understand how to programme it, will be used correctly by far more people than one that requires regular manual adjustment to deliver its benefits.
The technology combines occupancy sensing — detecting whether rooms are actually in use rather than heating empty spaces on a fixed schedule — with machine learning algorithms that build an understanding of the household's or building's patterns over time and pre-empt heating needs without requiring manual input. Integration with energy tariff data allows the system to identify the most cost-effective times to heat thermal mass, and integration with weather forecasts allows pre-heating during warmer periods to reduce peak energy demand.
The funding will be used to complete product development, begin manufacturing, and establish distribution partnerships with energy companies, boiler installers, and smart home retailers in the UK.
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