FLEX‑TRUST
An Insight Circle UK Initiative

Grid flexibility, made bankable.

FLEX‑TRUST is an independent verification layer that turns a building's spare thermal capacity into audited, settlement‑ready grid flexibility — built to help the UK unlock 2GW of demand turn‑down by 2030.

Innovate UK (UKRI) grant application live
Founding‑team match already committed
Independently verified at Energy Systems Catapult
£1.2MTotal programme, software‑only scope
70%Grant intervention rate secured at this scope
24moTo public API gateway & commercial launch
2GWNational flexibility target this feeds directly
The problem

Flexibility platforms self‑report. Nobody independently verifies them.

Aggregators, insurers and the National Energy System Operator (NESO) have no independent way to check whether claimed grid flexibility is real — today's optimisation platforms are closed, self‑reporting "black boxes." That's a financial settlement risk sitting in the middle of the net‑zero transition.

01

What it does

Uses a building's thermal inertia — not its EPC rating — as the operational buffer that makes automated heat‑pump and BMS throttling provably safe. It converts fragmented residential HVAC data into an auditable, dispatchable virtual power plant.

02

Why it's investable

A financial‑grade, infrastructure‑agnostic assurance layer — not another app. Revenue comes from tiered SaaS licensing to aggregators and asset managers, plus risk‑assessment modules sold to utility boards via insightcircle.net.

How it works

A zero‑trust pipeline, built like a fintech settlement system.

Consumer privacy and data assurance are engineered in from the first byte — satisfying Ofgem's Data Best Practice Guidance by design, not by policy.

1

Ingestion isolation

Tenant credentials and raw IPs terminate inside a secure internal vault under row‑level encryption.

2

Fintech‑grade normalisation

Variable‑rate telemetry is bucketed into uniform 30‑minute intervals, filtering noise and gaps.

3

Tokenisation barrier

A hashing microservice replaces property references with anonymous tokens — permanently.

4

Spatial node mapping

Tokenised assets are cross‑referenced to substation coordinates, not addresses.

5

Outbound API gateway

Only spatial node markers reach utilities and the grid — zero consumer‑level exposure.

Two audiences, one capital stack

Where FLEX‑TRUST stands with public and private capital today.

The programme is deliberately structured so public funding protects neutrality and private funding accelerates commercial reach — each audience gets a different, honest answer below.

Public sector

A mission‑aligned, low‑risk grant case

Innovate UK application in progress, scoped deliberately as Industrial Research — not Experimental Development — to keep the intervention rate high and the taxpayer's cost per kilowatt unlocked low.

  • £840,000 requested against a £360,000 private match already secured through founding‑team asset allocation — zero solvency risk to the grant.
  • Open, infrastructure‑agnostic standard — publicly documented via insightcircle.co.uk to drive market‑wide adoption, not vendor lock‑in.
  • Independent verification built in from Month 18 at the Energy Systems Catapult, ahead of public launch.
  • Directly additional to the 2GW demand‑turn‑down mission — this cannot be built as a closed commercial product and still stay neutral.
Request the full application
Private sector

A funded, de‑risked entry point

FLEX‑TRUST is now open to private capital on top of a grant‑anchored, non‑dilutive base — the public funding does the risk‑stripping so private capital can move faster into a commercial‑ready roadmap.

  • Productised as a SaaS module inside a transaction‑ready commercial platform (insightcircle.net) — billing, NDAs, and project matching already built.
  • Recurring revenue model: per‑node licensing to aggregators and asset managers, plus risk‑assessment modules sold to utility boards.
  • Delivery risk pre‑mitigated — three technical roles staffed on day one via the pre‑vetted Expert Circle talent pipeline.
  • Clear commercial launch milestone: public API gateway and dashboards live by Month 24.
Discuss co‑investment terms
Programme budget — £1,200,000Software‑only scope
£840,000 requested — Innovate UK / UKRI grant
£360,000 secured — founding‑team private match
Delivery plan

Four deliverables to public launch.

M6

Infrastructure blueprint

Decoupled database infrastructure and tokenisation protocols live on secure cloud.

M12

Live ingestion connectors

4S Power hardware telemetry and Smart DCC meter streams flowing into the engine.

M18

Independent verification

Catapult‑tested baseline accuracy under simulated network noise.

M24

Public launch

Open API gateway and commercial dashboards live on insightcircle.net.

Independent by design. Funded to stay that way.

FLEX‑TRUST takes no money from software vendors or hardware sponsors — public grant funding keeps the standard neutral, private capital scales it. Applications and enquiries reviewed weekly.