Millions of UK households are unreachable digitally. We're designing a future where no one's left behind.
The Energy Innovation Centre is a not-for-profit that supports innovators through the innovation process in gas, electricity transmission and distribution. Working in partnership with nine of the UK's energy networks, they run funding calls, matching and one-to-one support to help new solutions reach the sector.
networks funding
homes live now
unit pilot in Q4 2026
Energy services are going digital faster than the people who depend on them. When works are planned or the power goes off, the households least able to cope are usually the last to hear.
In autumn 2025, Cadent and five other networks challenged Thunk to solve this problem. Following 3 months of research and design we created Message Beacon. Six networks now fund it, the patent is filed, and units are in real homes.
Older households, people without confidence online, people in rural areas with patchy coverage. When something urgent happens on the network, every channel that reaches everyone else fails to reach them.
“Digitally excluded” turned out not to mean “no smartphone”. Most people had one. What they didn’t have was any intention of downloading an app, signing up for an account, or opening a text from a number they didn’t recognise.
Digitally excluded communities were invisible to smart service design
Existing emergency and service communications assumed connectivity that many households didn’t have
Energy providers lacked tools, models, or frameworks for non-digital service delivery
The sector needed to move from policy compliance to genuine innovation leadership
The research pointed to something that has to ask very little of the household. Message Beacon is a small device that sits on the fridge and flashes when a message goes out. Tap it with any phone and the message opens in the household’s own language. No app, no sign-up, no personal data held anywhere.
It belongs to the home rather than a named person, so whoever is in can use it. It stays silent until something matters, and it is never used for marketing.
Every tap is logged, which means a network can show its regulator that the message was read rather than that it was sent.
Prototyped over 20 concept solutions, from community-based alert systems to passive data sensing, human-led service triggers, and printed service artefacts with embedded trust signals
Produced a playbook for non-digital service layers that providers could test and adopt
Influenced comms strategy, investment roadmaps, and the integration of inclusion metrics into net-zero planning
Patent pending with around twenty devices in real homes, and a funding approved for the next phase
01
Ethnographic research with digitally excluded and vulnerable households, watching how information actually reaches them and whether anyone acts on it.
02
The networks asked how to reach these customers. The research said the barrier was trust and capability, which needs a different answer.
03
Over twenty concepts, from community alert systems to printed artefacts carrying trust signals, tested with excluded users, energy providers and telecoms stakeholders.
04
Hardware and software, through to working devices in real homes.
The collaboration with Thunk led to actionable outcomes rather than just a “oh, there’s a report”. This is something practical that can be taken forward. For me, it is around the game-changing outcomes that we can use and develop further. That is really the lightbulb moment.
Steve Dacre, Innovation Lead, Northern Gas Networks
A disciplined hunt for value — the structure to explore the unknown without the usual cost of getting it wrong.
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Bring us the thing everyone in your organisation disagrees about. We'll tell you what we'd do, whether that involves us or not.
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