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Octopus Energy says its efforts to boost demand over the bank holiday weekend by offering customers lower prices or even paying them to use electricity as part of an ad hoc trial appear to have been “very effective” although it is still analysing the results.
Chief executive Greg Jackson told Utility Week the trial was set up in less than a week as the electricity system operator (ESO) prepared for exceptionally low demand on the transmission network, partly due to high output from distributed renewables.
“Our Agile tariff itself automatically adjusts to times of low and high demand and potential imbalance on the grid,” Jackson explained, “and so our customer base naturally has a chunk of people whose price varies according to what’s happening on the grid and there’s a strong reaction to that.”
“In addition, this weekend we ran a series of trials with test groups and control groups to study a variety of other ways of using price to incentive customers to change demand. And the early indications are that it was very effective but we’re still running the analysis so we can’t quantify it yet.”
Jackson said the trial included a cross section of customers and was not limited to those already on their Agile tariff: “Some customers got one offer, others got another and some got none. We were able to start doing some really statistically meaningful trials of the extent to which we can use a combination of smart meters, dynamic pricing, customer messaging and data science to have a positive impact on how the grid manages with, for example, very high renewables.”
He said Octopus’ technology platform Kraken allows the company to launch trials on the spur of the moment: “This ability to take cohorts of customers, even those who are traditionally seen as being non-engaged and enable them to play a role in balancing the system – it’s really exciting… The whole of the communications plan, the flexible pricing, the data analysis and so on was all done in less than a week.”
“It’s kind of bonkers that when we’ve got high renewables, we end up turning generation off. Instead, encourage people to use the most of those green electrons,” he remarked. “That way, it’s better for generators, better for the grid and better for customers and far more importantly than anything else, it’s better for net zero.”
National Grid ESO said it also analysing the impact of the trial but the early indications are that it was effective in raising demand.
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