Comment: With many homes still reliant on fossil fuel heating systems, Johan du Plessis, CEO of Tepeo, a British clean tech company, looks at how smart heat batteries will help accelerate the transition to low-carbon heat while keeping the electricity grid in balance.

According to a report published by the National Audit Office earlier this year, heating the UK’s 28 million homes accounted for 18% of all UK greenhouse gas emissions in 2021.

The main source of these emissions is from burning natural gas to heat homes. A low-carbon alternative to home heating presents itself in the form of domestic thermal energy storage (TES) or heat batteries.

Electric storage heating technology such as night storage heaters, which store heat during off-peak hours and then release it gradually during peak hours the following day, isn’t a new concept.

Yet, despite having been around since the early 1960s, it’s yet to become mainstream.A primary limitation of night storage heaters is that they aren’t installed...