Shell offers prizes to tempt customers to reduce demand

Shell Energy is offering customers the chance to win prizes including £100 vouchers and an Electric Mini to encourage them to shift their electricity consumption outside of peak hours.

The prizes will be awarded to customers participating in its Smart Flex scheme which is supporting the new demand flexibility service launched by National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO) to prevent electricity shortages this winter.

The supplier said the more events a customer takes part in and the more energy they save, the more entries they will get for the prize draws, increasing their chances to win.

For every 0.1KWh of electricity they save during an event, customers will earn one entry into a monthly prize draw for one hundred £100 vouchers and one entry for its grand prize draw at the end of the trial for an Electric Mini and a Shell Energy home charging pack, together worth £30,000. The vouchers can be spent at various retail outlets including major supermarkets.

Shell Energy said it will increase the number of monthly prizes that are available as more customers take part.

A spokesperson for the company said it is looking to establish whether taking a “premium bonds approach” to incentives can driver higher participation rates: “The lessons we can learn as an industry, with a number of different incentives offered by different suppliers, will ultimately help influence the design of future schemes.”

The scheme is open to all customers with a fully functioning smart meter who have been sent an email explaining how to sign up.

The ESO revealed last week that it had contracted 800MWh of flexibility in its first auctions to use the Demand Flexibility Service “in anger”. It first tested the service in mid-November.