Market view: The low carbon home front

Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks’ NTVV trial found that to get households and small businesses on board the low carbon revolution, DNOs need to be creative in the way they sell it.

Distribution Network Operators (DNOs) have a range of stakeholders, but the customer must be at the centre of everything they do. The energy regulatory system in Great Britain obligates and motivates DNOs, such as Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks, to ensure the highest levels of cost-effectiveness and reliability while helping to facilitate a low carbon future.
In this series of articles, we have shown how the Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks-led New Thames Valley Vision (NTVV) project, a Low Carbon Networks (LCNF) project, has been trialling innovative ways of achieving these aims. It has done this through intelligent new methods to monitor, model and manage the network. However, NTVV was about more than this – it also placed a great emphasis on the way a DNO engages and interacts with its customers.

Customer communication

The traditional distribution network model assumes a one-way flow of electricity from generators to consumers. The principal duty of the DNO is to safely connect customers and ensure reliability of supply. As a result, the main DNO/customer interface is at the time of connection or at the event of disruption. However, the future will see increased use of distributed generation, storage and electric vehicles, resulting in a complex multi-directional electricity flow. In order to plan and operate in this environment, DNOs need an even more complete overview of the flow of electricity and state of the network, and this means improved customer communication.

NTVV gave Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks the opportunity to investigate how enhanced DNO/customer co-operation can result in a more efficient and cost-effective network. NTVV engaged domestic and small and medium-sized business customers through technological innovation, consumer events and third party support such as with local councils. As well as helping to support the network, this interaction has the added benefits of informing the public about issues related to energy and sustainability as well as identifying high priority customers, an energy regulator Ofgem obligation.

NTVV approached customers via a number of different routes including events, newsletters, a website and a low carbon community advice centre: “Your Energy Matters”. This was opened in Bracknell High Street in December 2013, and by May 2014 had welcomed 3,000 visitors. It contained displays and advice on low carbon technologies that could realistically bring benefits to consumers.

The centre yielded lessons on how best to engage the general public. Because most consumers do not normally make a trip into the centre of town, especially not to get energy advice, there needed to be an interesting and attractive front display. A Twizy electric vehicle on loan from Renault, which was parked within Your Energy Matters, proved to be a very successful visitor draw.

The centre also needed to have a clear and consistent mission statement. The materials on display needed to teach consumers how to meet their energy needs in a sustainable way and show that this was not a showroom for selling hardware, as many initial visitors supposed.

Your Energy Matters was also used as a venue for events focused on the local area, each highlighting a particular aspect of low carbon technology, from low-energy lighting to efficient household appliances. The most successful event was the March 2014 Low Carbon Day. This had a clear theme and measurable objective of causing a significant reduction in electricity consumption in Bracknell for one hour between 5pm and 6pm on a weekday. It was held across the town through a series of activities, accompanied by marketing, presentations, school talks, social and online media etc, all of which helped to deliver an exciting, interesting and successful event.

NTVV also maintained contact with a domestic focus group (DFG). Each participant household had an end-point monitor, which allowed the remote monitoring of electricity over time. NTVV invited participants to a series of events where they were asked to review their energy behaviour and discuss ways of reducing or modifying energy consumption. This DFG allowed the DNO to try out sophisticated ways of presenting information to consumers and understand their reactions to different initiatives.

Not all customers are the same

A recurring theme in NTVV has been developing the understanding that all customers are different. Familiarity with each group is critical to understanding their attitudes to energy. NTVV conducted activities aimed at representative domestic households, social housing landlords, fuel poverty experts and commercial consumers, to name a few. Each of these groups has different priorities, considerations and needs to be approached in a very different way. Even within consumer groups, there can be a wide range of expectations and needs. The greater the degree of personalisation, the more the consumer will respond positively to communications.

Among domestic consumers, interest in energy and sustainability matters tends to be low, except for a core group with a strong personal interest in the matter. Typical consumers have a number of different priorities and energy is only one of them. Most agree in principle that they would like to save energy, both for environmental and economic reasons, but there are hurdles to them taking action. For example, while consumers would like to have high efficiency appliances, they are often unwilling to throw away household equipment that is still working perfectly well. For this reason, these customers are most open to buying low carbon technology when old appliances break down.

NTVV found the greatest inertia among small business owners, such as shopkeepers, for whom implementation of low-carbon technology seems to be a very low priority. This may be due to their higher relative staff costs, the high proportion of rented premises or that their high footfall makes energy efficiency difficult. Professional estate managers for larger commercial properties, such as larger office building or IT centres, were generally more open to engagement, because these locations are better placed to benefit from cost-saving technology, such as peak shifting thermal storage or automated demand response schemes.

Interviews conducted with social housing providers showed that they are active in promoting low carbon technology. However, these providers are firstly focused on ensuring affordability for their tenants. Their priorities coincide partly, but not completely, with those of DNOs. For example, most housing associations take a “fabric-first” policy to improvements in their stock. This often means improving insulation, which helps reduce consumption. In the past, they have tended to be less interested in thermal load-shifting because they had relatively few properties which could benefit from this, however as the smart grid evolves, so may this relationship may well follow suit.

Communication is multi-sided

In this series of five articles, we have looked at how the NTVV project has worked to find solutions to the challenges increasingly being faced by DNOs as we transition into a low-carbon future. We have looked at how improved monitoring technology and modelling techniques allow network operators to understand what is happening on the system. NTVV has also found new ways of making use of this information to operate the grid in a way that ensures reliable and cost-effective service.

NTVV has shown that communication between DNOs and customers is not one-sided, or even two-sided. It is a conversation with many stakeholders including local government, business, housing associations and non-governmental organisations which represent specific interests. The NTVV project was conducted in close co-operation with Bracknell Forest Council, local housing associations and technology providers so as to ensure that the needs and views of each stakeholder were considered when implementing low carbon technologies. All of this research has both highlighted and reinforced the importance of understanding the central figure in the electricity network, the consumer.

This article is the fifth and final article in a series looking at how Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks and the NTVV project have been exploring better ways of managing distribution networks.

Click here to read the first, second, third or fourth articles.