A new report from Octopus Energy has highlighted the successful behaviour change driven by their Agile tariff.
Bringing the economy 7 concept up to the present day, it uses half-hourly time of use pricing to inform customers of when it is most and least economical to use energy through smart meters providing actual wholesale energy costs in each settlement period. Customers will even be notified when the grid is oversupplied through a ‘price plunge alert’ and prices become negative.
It is hoped that similar tariffs could smooth the peaks and troughs in energy demand and better match up to supply. Results so far in this respect have been positive with the 28% of customers defined as “engaged” typically reducing their peak time consumption by 28%.
Drivers of electric vehicles were found to be especially responsive and they reduced their peak consumption by almost half.
If similar results could be achieved on a larger scale it would provide greater capacity for electric vehicle rollout and reduce or delay future investment in generation.
In addition to the benefits accruing to service providers, all but 5% of customers paid less than if they were on Octopus’ best fixed price offering.
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