Nesta was exhibiting at Installer Show for the fourth year last week. This event is the largest trade show in the UK for the heating, water, air and energy industry and this year’s show had 30,000 visitors and 800 exhibitors across three halls at Birmingham’s NEC.

It’s a great opportunity for us to meet heating engineers and industry folk, to find out what others are up to and to talk about our work – and hear what others think of it.

As a regular exhibitor at the show, over the past four years I’ve seen it evolve in many ways. The team and I spoke to a huge cross section of the industry over the three days. After taking some time to recover from several days of non-stop heating chat, here are my reflections:

The big exhibitors – manufacturers, merchants and umbrella schemes – now focus mainly on showcasing their heat pump products and services. This wasn’t the case four years ago, where boilers (regular and hydrogen) were far more abundant.

Minister for Energy Consumers Miatta Fahnbulleh gave a speech about the government's plans for clean heat, while former senior politicians Grant Shapps and Chris Skidmore took part in talks.

The event celebrates excellence in the installation industry, through awards for installers doing high-quality work and brilliant new entrants. Recognition was also given to those who’ve dedicated their lives to improving the industry – setting standards in heat pump installation, bringing new communities into heating and plumbing and campaigning for change on issues such as tool theft.

It’s also very clear that installers are instrumental in helping each other to learn and improve. There were panels featuring expert installers who’ve written books to help others, and talks on peer mentoring. Nathan Gambling launched his new ‘Guild of Master Heating Engineers’. Heat Geek and Warmur were on hand to talk about their courses and materials. And the day before Installer Show, the installer-led Heat Pump Unconference took place for the third time at Energy Systems Catapult’s offices, with installers, innovators and others getting together to discuss ways to move the industry forward.

We launched our Start at Home initiative – free heat pumps for newly trained installers to install in their own homes – with five industry partners. We got a very positive response from installers and other industry players keen on running their own schemes. One reason this has landed well is that manufacturers, merchants and umbrella schemes are ramping up their activity in supporting installers to move into heat pumps. Wolseley’s new Renewables Centre, which had a big presence at the show, is one example. We had as many conversations with gas engineers as heat pump installers this year, probably the first time that’s happened.

There were software tools to help installers design systems and manage their businesses (including Nesta-supported ventures Carno and Renbee, plus others like Spruce). Adia’s kit helps speed up installations and get better performance from existing radiators while Havenwise is a software-only platform that uses a heat pump’s API to optimise efficiency and get the best value from time-of-use tariffs. Remote diagnostics and fault finding seem to be climbing the agenda. And several companies I spoke to were coming up with smart, technology-enabled ways to do installations more quickly and give customers a better ongoing experience.

Several original equipment manufacturers had huge new commercial models to showcase, but the Heat Geek stand gained the most attention for showcasing the beautiful Anzen thermoelectric heat pump and the very practical Blackbird – a super light heat pump for flat roofs from WeHeat. Anzen is at pilot stage, while the Blackbird is widely available in the Netherlands.

Being at the show is exhausting but invigorating. It’s inspiring to see the effort and dedication that skilled professionals and creative entrepreneurs are putting into driving forward low-carbon heating in the UK.

At the same time, it brought the various barriers that slow installers down into sharp relief. We need to bring the same laser focus that some installers are putting on optimising operations to policy and regulatory processes including consumer protection, standards, planning permission, grant administration and DNO registration – then we’d really be onto a winner.