Octopus Energy and Ohme have joined up with National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO) and Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) for the UK’s largest ever home energy flexibility study.
The study will be called CrowdFlex and will involve over 25,000 households, with customer energy use patterns analysed, to demonstrate how they might change their behaviour and charge electric vehicles, heat pumps and home batteries at different times to access cheaper, greener power.
The analysis will look at how those usage patterns change in response to price signals from Octopus Energy’s smart tariffs and direct instructions from Ohme’s smart electric vehicle chargers and mobile app.
The findings will show how changes in energy price and demand affect consumers and what impact that has on a flexible smart grid powered increasingly by renewables.
According to National Grid ESO’s Future Energy Scenarios, there will be 11 million EVs on British roads by 2030, and there is a government target to install 600,000 pumps a year by 2028.
Effective use of the flexibility of both electric vehicles and heat pumps will be key to the future power grid. It will encourage consumers to use even more renewable energy by shifting electricity demand into off-peak hours.
The consortium will gain unparalleled insight into EV driver behaviour using consumer, energy and transport data from Ohme and Octopus Energy.
National Grid ESO and SSEN will use the results to better understand how customers respond to these opportunities and the potential of domestic flexibility in national and local grid balancing. This will pave the way for households to provide more flexibility to grids.
James Eddison, CTO and co-founder of Octopus Energy Group, said:
“Our customers are some of the most engaged and climate-conscious in the country. Many of them are already using smart energy technologies to move their energy usage when energy is cheaper and greener and the grid is less stressed.
“By scaling up our previous demand-side-response trials and joining forces with other key players in energy, we will for the first time be able to find out how big the role is that our homes can play in providing grid flexibility. This research project will help us demonstrate how we can use energy storage in our homes and flexible energy demand to exploit renewable energy and bring about the clean, green grid of the future, globally.”
Carolina Tortora, Head of innovation strategy and digital transformation at National Grid ESO, said:
“Technologies like electric cars and heat pumps have a key role in helping Britain to reach net zero. But there’s a lot for us to learn about how consumer behaviour can shape that journey.
“This project will give us some really exciting insight into how smart tariffs and technologies can influence the way people consume electricity and help us balance the grid. As greater volumes of less controllable renewable power joins the system, electricity consumers are only going to become more important in that balancing act.”
The project will be funded by National Grid ESO and SSEN’s Network Innovation Allowance (NIA), which provides an annual allowance to fund innovation projects that create value for National Grid ESO’s customers, reduce costs for electricity consumers and accelerate progress towards net zero.
