Almost 700,000 customers take part in Octopus’ Saving Sessions

Almost 700,000 customers took part in the Saving Sessions hosted by Octopus Energy to help reduce peak demand on the power grid over winter as part of the ESO’s new Demand Flexibility Service.

The scheme, which came to an end last week, was one of several contingency measures introduced by National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO) to avoid blackouts over the winter amid concerns over the security of energy supplies.

Octopus Energy said nearly 700,000 of its smart meter customers participated in its Saving Sessions – the largest number for any supplier. The company currently has roughly 4.9 million customers in the UK, of which 2.6 million have a smart meter.

The company noted that 1.5 million of these customers were gained through the acquisition of Bulb, which took place after the Saving Sessions had already begun, although these customers were able to take part once they’d been migrated to Octopus’ systems.

The participating customers collectively reduced their electricity demand by 1.86GWh across 13 windows lasting a total of 14.5 hours. Octopus said this represents an average reduction of 128MW per hour.

In exchange, customers were paid a total of £5.3 million at average price of £2.85/kWh. The average earning per customer was in the region of £7.50, although the average for the top 5% of earners was more than £41.

Octopus said they prevented more than 430 tonnes of carbon dioxide from being emitted into the atmosphere.

“The last five months have been a huge step in the right direction for our future green grid,” said Octopus Energy head of flexibility Alex Schoch.

“We’ve proven that households can play a significant role in balancing the grid and moving us away from dirty fossil fuels.

“It’s now time to reflect, learn and develop this scheme further before next winter. We have the chance to kick coal plants into the history books, and the more households in the UK take part, the faster we will get there.”

Utility Week recently found multiple instances of Octopus Energy customers claiming to have earnt many tens, and in one case hundreds, of pounds per session by gaming the system.

According to posters on several internet forums, they were able to do this by massively increasing their electricity usage during the hours leading up to the sessions. These usage levels were used to apply an in-day adjustment to their baseline consumption for calculating their demand reduction during the sessions.

Octopus Energy said the “handful” of people that reported earning large payments represent a miniscule fraction of the hundreds of thousands of customers who took part in the sessions.