ENERGENCE LTD specialise in energy policy consulting, monitoring and compliance for the built environment.

The “Merton Rule” was introduced in 2003 and required all new commercial developments to generate 10% of their energy needs from onsite renewable energy. The GLA included a policy in its 2005 London Plan requiring a 20% cut in carbon emissions from renewables. This target was progressively ramped up in succeeding iterations of the Plan until the current (2021) version that now requires both residential and commercial developments to be zero-carbon.

The energy monitoring principle was started by Merton Council to develop an automated (administrative and technical) system for finding out if the PV panels and wind turbines etc were generating the amount of renewable energy (and cutting the quantity of carbon) that had been promised in their planning permissions. 

The first version of the platform was designed by students from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (Massachusetts) in 2007 under the guidance of Prof Fabio Carrera, founder of the “City Knowledge” concept.

In 2009 Energence Ltd (evolving out of Merton and WPI) set up as a venture to carry the “monitoring the Merton Rule” idea forward. By 2011 the fully functioning Automated Energy Monitoring Platform (AEMP) was operational.

In 2013 Ealing Council decided that it wanted true confirmation that the renewable/low-carbon energy systems were delivering what they were supposed to – so it contracted Energence to coordinate the monitoring of them. Ealing planners added an Enforcement Condition to their Decision Notices that legally required Developers to install monitoring devises that uploaded the data to the AEMP. This became known as the “Ealing Condition” (a natural successor to the “Merton Rule”).

The platform has also monitored over 2,000 PV arrays and other energy systems for clients including the Kirklees Council, Cardiff Council, Town & Country Housing Association, the YHA, Open University, and DECC.

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