The Fife framework is used by local authorities and registered social housing providers across Scotland and England to ensure value for money, quality and compliance when procuring technologies and services for community and district heating schemes.

Following a rigorous assessment process, Switch2 has now been approved to supply the complete long-term operational needs of heat networks. This includes all heat metering requirements (from bulk metering in the plant room through to pay-as-you-go smart meters within homes);  heat interface units (HIUs); billing solutions; and maintenance and optimisation services.

Participating local authorities and housing providers will now be able to procure Switch2's open access smart metering, which permits other metering and billing providers third party access to operate the technology. This gives clients greater long-term supply flexibility for their energy prepayment systems.

Switch2's optimisation services will enable Local Authorities to bring down the cost of operating heat networks by gaining full real-time visibility of performance across the entire scheme.

This solution is delivering performance improvements for UK heat networks by combining advanced data analytics from heat metering, Building Energy Management Systems (BEMS), sensors and other measurement points to inform continuous optimisation of network performance.  As a result, efficiency is improved, asset life is improved and call outs are reduced.

The Framework Agreement, which is compliant with Scottish and European Procurement Law, runs through to July 31, 2022.

Lee Parry, category manager with Fife Council, said: “Using our experience of communal and district heating schemes, we’ve created the heat metering and billing multi-supplier framework to deliver best practice in procurement for heat networks.  We are helping local authorities to deliver compliant schemes and assisting the growth of heat networks across the UK.'

Kirsty Lambert, director of Switch2 Energy said: “We're delighted to have won contracts across Scotland and England through the Fife Council Framework and to have expanded the range of products and services we can offer participating local authorities and housing providers. Scotland's heat network sector is a huge success story and we are proud to contribute to delivering high quality, affordable, low carbon district and community heating schemes.'