How the University of Westminster cut electricity consumption by 14.8% across its Harrow Campus, saving 61,715 kWh between December 2025 and March 2026, without any investment and with zero disruption to students
This partnership is part of our wider mission to accelerate the energy transition while ensuring that universities like Westminster can access practical, affordable solutions that deliver real operational, financial and environmental impact.
Managing energy demand in student accommodation
Student accommodation is one of the hardest building types to manage for energy. All-inclusive rents structurally remove any incentive for residents to heat efficiently, heating runs continuously through winter, and rooms can stay at temperature during void periods between tenancies. With no centralised visibility at device or room level, waste is significant and largely invisible.
The reality facing university estates teams:
- All-inclusive rents remove any incentive for residents to heat efficiently.
- Heating runs continuously through winter, with no centralised visibility at device or room level to identify waste.
- Traditional retrofit solutions are too disruptive, too slow and too expensive to justify across a large residential estate.
The University of Westminster manages a substantial residential estate at Harrow Campus, with 677 heating appliances across 13 student housing blocks. Like many universities, it faced mounting pressure to reduce energy costs and demonstrate progress against its Net Zero targets, while operating within tight capital constraints and an absolute requirement not to disrupt the student living experience.
Why Voltalis offers a real solution
The University of Westminster partnered with Voltalis and deployed Voltalis for Business across all 13 blocks simultaneously. Voltalis for Business connects existing heating devices to the Voltalis demand response platform, with no new hardware, no site disruption and no capital expenditure.
There is zero capital expenditure and zero ongoing cost for the University, with Voltalis funding the technology entirely and no hidden fees or subscriptions.
Voltalis for Business is designed to deliver measurable reductions in electricity consumption while connecting the estate directly to UK grid flexibility markets. Students retain full control of their room temperature throughout, with override capability available at all times.
A smarter way to reduce electricity costs
Voltalis continuously monitors electricity consumption across every connected device, automatically modulating non-critical heating loads during periods of grid stress and optimising heating schedules to eliminate waste.
Void periods are managed automatically: rooms power down when unoccupied between tenancies and restore ahead of new arrivals, removing a source of structural waste that previously required manual intervention. Demand response events involve small, brief modulations within agreed comfort parameters, imperceptible under normal conditions and requiring no change to existing supplier relationships or estates team workflows.
Smarter energy management for facility teams
Voltalis for Business gives the University real-time consumption data at appliance level across all 13 blocks, a level of granular visibility it had never had before. Void period waste becomes quantifiable, and the Scope 2 emissions data that previously required manual collection is generated automatically, ready for ESG and SECR reporting and potential EPC improvement.
The platform brings monitoring, control and optimisation together in a single dashboard, giving the University one platform and one view across the estate, an approach that can scale to any number of additional sites with no additional setup cost.
“Upgrading energy efficiency across a large portfolio usually means major capital expenditure and significant logistical headaches but not with Voltalis, quite the opposite.“
— Steve Ford, Deputy Director of Estates, University of Westminster
“We’ve achieved impressive reductions in our electricity consumption since activating the Voltalis system across our student housing. The install was frictionless, and it has been optimising our radiators seamlessly in the background, delivering energy efficiency, cost savings and sustainability without disrupting the student experience.”
— Dexter Nicco, Estate Services Facilities Manager, University of Westminster
Driving a smarter, greener future for sport
Student accommodation operators across the UK face the same combination of pressures the University of Westminster is navigating: energy costs rising, MEES 2030 compliance approaching, ESG reporting becoming mandatory, and capital budgets under pressure.
Demand response is not a future technology, it is operational today, at scale, across already-occupied student accommodation. The Harrow Campus deployment shows what is achievable without capital investment, without disruption and without compromise, for a university managing residential accommodation across multiple sites, Voltalis scales with the estate: one platform, one view, one programme.
Learn more about how Voltalis is supporting universities and student accommodation providers across the UK.
