UK City Haringey Spies on Residents to Lower Energy Usage

Not everyone realizes how wasteful their energy usage really is. However, One town in the UK, Haringey, took the green finger pointing to extreme measures by hiring a spy plane to fly over the city and take heat loss photos of its residences. The photos were then matched to a city map, displaying which houses were leaking the most heat at the time the spy plane passed over.

An aircraft, outfitted with a military type thermal imager, flew over Haringey (borough of London) 17 times, capturing the heat signature of literally every house. The video footage was then converted into still photographs then laid over a map of the area. Each home was given color coded ratings (blue at cooler temperatures, red at the hottest) with shades of paler blue and reds used to show grades of their heat loss.

They then put the map online so the residents could see whether their next-door neighbors were red shaded energy hogs or cool blue shaded and earth friendly. They could even type in their address and have the map automatically pull it up.

The council which enacted the spy snapshots claims the hiring of a spy plane to fly over their residents homes is not to entice increased ridicule and decreased energy consumption but rather, "The sole aim of the project is to assist residents with properly insulating their properties. Therefore please ensure that you read the associated pages on energy efficiency and the grant assistance that may be available to you." According to their website.

Although this may seem like a twisted "big brother" type scam, the posting of heat loss online might actually cut down unnecessary energy usage. The Haringey council claims that "In a typical British home, around one-third of the heat produced by a central heating system is rapidly lost through the roof, ceiling and walls."

Which amounts to real monetary losses for energy wasting Brits, For a poorly insulated home in the Uk, 1 in every 3 pounds spent on heating is lost as escaped air.

Posting general "ambient information", regardless of whether it is an invasion of privacy, can actually help us reduce our energy consumption by making visible the patterns of our personal energy usage. If knowledge of a homes energy usage were available to anyone at any time, the home owner could take steps to curtail their heat signature, effectly avoiding being the hot headed, odd man out in the neighborhood.

Although information like this could get out of hand, What would happen if everyone openly published their personal energy usage on their Facebook page?

Click here to see the Official Haringey Heat Indicator Map and Website
Haringey Heat Loss Information