Workshops & training

Want to help your colleagues or people in your community adopt healthier and happier lifestyles? Home Energy Scotland offers free workshops and training for employees and community groups, through in person, online training and eLearning.

Find out more and send a workshop enquiry to get involved.

Colleagues participating in a workshop

Workshops for employees and community groups

Want to help your colleagues or people in your community adopt healthier and happier lifestyles?

We offer a range of workshops that will help participants to lower their household energy bills and their carbon footprint and save water. Here are some examples of the types of workshops we can deliver:

How to save energy and reduce fuel bills while keeping warm at home.

Ways to use water wisely, delivered in partnership with Scottish Water.

Themes, messages and delivery can be customised to different audiences within your organisation or community if you have identified specific energy-saving needs or interests.

Send us a workshop enquiry

Training session: Basic energy advice and referrals to Home Energy Scotland

We can offer online or in-person sessions to support local voluntary sector organisations, community groups or other trusted intermediary organisations to provide basic energy advice to their clients and to make onward referrals to Home Energy Scotland.

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Training session being conducted over virtual call

Training course: Introduction to heat pumps

The Scottish Government’s Heat in Buildings Strategy sets out the ambition for one million homeowners to have switched to zero emissions heating by 2030. How will this impact the householders we all support?

If your organisation provides energy advice to households, you can receive free training on giving good advice about heat pumps - from how they work and what homes are suitable, to getting to grips with the controls and how to get the best from them. Our online training can be tailored to your organisation's needs.

The course is hosted online and can be tailored to meet specific advice that you’d like covered, so please get in touch to see how we can work with you to address specific heat pump challenges your team faces, or if you’d like a course outline and more details about what our training covers.

In this two-hour session, we’ll answer:

  1. Why is there a need?
  2. What technologies are available?
  3. Which homes are suitable?
  4. Common myths – is there any truth in them?
  5. How to use controls to improve efficiency and stay warm.
  6. Combining a heat pump, solar panels and a battery.

After completing this course, participants will:

  1. Understand the role of heat pumps in Scotland’s net zero plan.
  2. Know what heat pumps are and describe how they work.
  3. Be able to explain common myths about heat pumps.
  4. Provide practical advice to households with one, including optimal settings and common troubleshooting.

Training course: Electric heating, metering and billing

If your organisation gives advice about energy and billing, you’ll know how important and challenging helping people with electric heating can be. To support organisations like yours, we’re offering a free training course where we explain how different electric heating systems work and are controlled. 

Participants don’t need to have a technical background, but an awareness of how householders interact with the energy market will be helpful. The training takes three hours or can be split into two sessions and can be delivered online. We can even tailor the training to suit participants’ levels of knowledge or focus on the heating and metering combinations relevant to the people you work with.

In this session, we'll cover:

  1. An introduction to the main electric heating appliances and systems used in homes, including their controls.
  2. The main types of electric meters, including restricted meters and tariffs, such as Economy 7, Economy 2000, Total Heat with Total Control and ComfortPlus.
  3. Which heating systems and electric meter types are compatible.
  4. Ways householders can improve their circumstances, including better use of heating controls and changing their heating system or meter.

After completing this course, participants will be able to:

  1. Explain how electric heating systems and appliances are designed and operated.
  2. Spot differences between meter types for homes with electric heating, including restricted meters.
  3. Consider other electric heating systems in relation to restricted meters.
  4. Explain the running costs associated with electric heating systems and meter arrangement.
  5. Explain how different restricted meters and their associated tariffs work.
  6. Give advice on upgrading or removing electric storage heaters.
  7. Give advice on switching from restricted meter tariffs.
  8. Help householders work out their next steps.