About Smart Energie
We started Smart Energie because too many homeowners were being let down by installers who cut corners, oversold and disappeared. We decided to build the company we’d want to hire for our own homes.
How we got here
Smart Energie was founded in 2010 in West London, at a moment when the UK retrofit industry was still working out what it wanted to be. The opportunity was obvious — millions of leaky, badly heated homes, rapidly rising energy costs, and a government beginning to take the carbon arithmetic seriously. What wasn’t obvious, at least to people outside the industry, was the speed at which that opportunity would attract a wave of operators willing to take shortcuts. Cowboys with a high-vis vest and a clipboard, sub-contracting to other cowboys, all chasing whichever subsidy was paying the most that quarter.
The founding team had spent enough time inside the energy sector to understand exactly how retrofit could go wrong. We’d seen jobs sized to the subsidy, not the property. Equipment chosen by margin, not suitability. Engineers handed a list of addresses and told to be on the next one by lunchtime. Customers left with a certificate and a problem they didn’t have before — damp creeping up a freshly insulated wall, a heat pump fitted to radiators it could never properly heat, a “smart” thermostat that nobody bothered to commission. That’s the company we were determined not to build.
“Every decision we make about how we work comes back to one question: would we be happy if this was our house?”
From the very beginning we did a few things differently. We hired engineers who genuinely cared about the craft and we paid them properly — employed terms, training budgets, good kit. We built a survey process that started with the property, not the product range. We said no to jobs we weren’t equipped to do well, even when the cash flow would have welcomed them. That meant slower growth in the early years. It also meant we built a reputation that brought customers back to us — and that brought their friends, neighbours and family. Most of our householder work still comes through that route today.
As demand for retrofit deepened — first from individual homeowners, later from local authorities, housing associations and utility-led obligation programmes — we grew carefully alongside it. Every new service line, every new accreditation, every new team member was added with the same standard in mind. We don’t take on what we can’t deliver well. We don’t promise what we can’t guarantee. We don’t disappear after the invoice clears. And when something does go wrong on a project — which, despite the best processes, occasionally happens — we own it, we fix it, and we improve so it doesn’t happen again.
We’ve invested early — and have kept investing — in the survey kit that lets us do the work well. Thermal imaging cameras across every team. LiDAR-capable scanning for heat-pump and whole-house design. Drones and photogrammetry for solar. Borescopes, moisture meters and ventilation testing for fabric work. None of this kit is glamorous. All of it changes the quality of the recommendation we can make — and therefore the quality of the work we deliver.
Fifteen years in, we’ve upgraded more than 1,500 homes across the UK. We hold seventeen significant industry accreditations — every credential that matters for the work we do. We’ve worked with private homeowners on single boiler replacements and with metropolitan councils on programmes covering hundreds of properties. We’ve delivered under utility-led schemes that have helped major suppliers meet their statutory obligations and helped Ofgem progress the UK’s decarbonisation aims. The work is different every time. The way we approach it is not.
We’re not the biggest retrofit company in the country and we’re not trying to be. We’re trying to be the best — by every measure that genuinely matters to a customer. The quality of the survey. The honesty of the recommendation. The clean of the install. The accuracy of the invoice. The presence of the aftercare. If we keep doing those things well, the rest takes care of itself. It always has.
What we stand for
No upselling. No jargon. No disappearing act after sign-off. We give you the honest recommendation, even when it’s not the most expensive one. If a measure isn’t right for your home, we’ll tell you. If we can’t take on your job well, we’ll tell you that too — and we’ll usually know someone who can. We’d rather lose a sale than win one we shouldn’t have.
If we commit to a timeline, we hold to it. If we quote a price, that’s the price you pay. If we say we’ll call back by Friday, we call back by Friday. Trust isn’t built in the big moments — it’s built in the small details. The accurate invoice. The phone answered first time. The job that looks as careful on day three as it did on day one.
Our engineers take genuine pride in leaving a home better than they found it. That’s not a slogan on a van — it’s something we look for when we hire, talk about constantly in how we train, and notice in how we review every finished job. It’s also the difference between work that holds up for twenty years and work that needs revisiting in three.
Recent jobs we said no to
We turn down roughly one in every six enquiries we survey. Sometimes because the house isn’t ready. Sometimes because what the customer wants isn’t what the house needs. Sometimes because we’re the wrong installer for the job. Three recent examples — anonymised, but real:
Job 1
Homeowner had budget. Wanted a heat pump to replace a gas boiler. Fabric hadn’t been touched. Single-pane sash windows, minimal loft insulation, suspended timber floor with no underfloor insulation. We recommended a high-efficiency condensing boiler now and a heat pump in 2–3 years after a phased insulation programme. Lost the heat-pump job. Kept the customer.
Job 2
Cavity was already filled with rockwool from a 1990s install. Borescope showed settlement and wetness in the east-facing wall. We recommended removal and remedial work before any new insulation — which wasn’t the job the homeowner wanted. They went with a competitor who filled over it. We hope it doesn’t cause damp in five years. If it does, we’ll still pick up the phone.
Job 3
Roof orientation meant payback would have been 17+ years even with generous assumptions. We said so. Customer went elsewhere and got a system anyway. We’d rather lose the work than sell a solar install we can’t stand behind.
These are the jobs we’re proud of not doing. If our survey says no, that’s a real answer — not a sales decision.
By the numbers
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Years in the industry
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Homes upgraded
£0M+
In customer energy savings
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CO₂ reduced
Customer stories
Or rather — the people it was done for do.
“They told me to sort the loft insulation before we talked about a heat pump. That single sentence was why I hired them. No one else had suggested the cheaper job first.”
Not just about finishing the job — about doing it properly. Get in touch and find out what that actually feels like when someone is in your home for three days.
