A strong community towards better energy management: meet the Knowle West neighbours!
Bristol stands out as the 8th city with more inhabitants in the United Kingdom. Bordering Wales, it has a strong maritime history, cultural background and was declared European Green Capital in 2025. All these inputs make Bristol a forefront city that is advancing towards tackling climate change and energy poverty.
In this context, TwinERGY brings together its approach to smarter energy use and works hand in hand with the Bristol Knowle West neighbourhood community , one of the several city districts that has incomes below the national average, and that has been thus particularly affected by the energy crisis. The pilot project advances showcasing the strength and the particular achievements of participants, with a remarkable level of engagement historically/conscientiously built around the Knowle West Media Center, with support of the Bristol City Council and the University of Bristol.
Two weeks ago, the consortium celebrated its second general assembly in Bristol, particularly at the KWMC headquarters and in the middle of Knowle West. The event counted with the participation of all the project partners and the welcoming speech of Marvin Rees, Mayor of Bristol, who highlighted the city’s organisations fostering a more resilient society and the need to preserve and advance European connectivity throughout EU-funded initiatives.
The two-days conference served to get to know the current situation of the TwinERGY technological modules, which are at its final stage of implementation in the several different use cases tested in the pilot cities. It also served as an update on how pilots are integrating participants' data in the platforms and the TwinERGY app, and the current situation in each location to properly face the final stage of the project maximising learnings and outputs performance.
Besides the technical presentations and discussions, the team had the opportunity to dive into the Knowle West area and visit social innovation spaces leveraged by the community such as The Factory (a south’s Bristol maker space for making, digital manufacturing and product design) and The Filwood Community Center (a red brick building facility at the head of Filwood Broadway that funnels activities leading to positive changes in the area), some of the many citizen engagement actions to transform urban living carried out by KWMC team. During the visit, the KWMC Factory held the Retrofit Festival, for practical, hands-on learning and big picture conversations around the question of “What if the climate transition and retrofit of our homes and streets were designed, owned and governed by the people who live there?”.
Visiting Bristol was also the occasion to film one of the last Energy Future Videos by the Ideas for Change team. Together with KWMC, they interviewed three participants with diverse backgrounds that have TwinERGY technology and solar panels installed in their houses. They explained how by using these devices their energy consumption has been reduced, as well as their energy bills, and how by getting more knowledge on power management has helped them to optimise their usage. In addition, they pointed out some complexities they experienced across the TwinERGY journey such as battery non functioning during a certain period of time which made the data collection difficult. This helped as a learning of the technological process.
IFC went to their households, got to know how they interact with the technology and how the Bristol team has assisted them on navigating to the TwinERGY pilot. Participants have a strong feeling of community and engagement with the actions to fight climate change and the energy crisis.
