Energy Demand Flexibiliity at Scale

The Centre for Net Zero (CNZ), in partnership with Octopus Energy, will undertake a series of field trials during Octopus Energy’s second Saving Sessions (winter 2023 - 2024). The trials will rigorously evaluate how and why the program itself works to reduce customers’ energy consumption during hours of high grid constraint.

We endeavor to build on the success of the 2022-2023 Saving Sessions, which showcased domestic customers' willingness to curtail energy consumption during peak periods, and CNZ’s analysis thereof (Jacob et al., 2023). To do so, we will implement a randomized encouragement design to evaluate the impact of customer participation in Saving Sessions.

As the share of renewable energy in the grid continues to grow, the need for effective energy balancing becomes increasingly important. Leveraging customers' willingness to curtail energy consumption during peak periods (i.e., demand flexibility) has the potential to prevent blackouts, reduce reliance on polluting energy sources that would otherwise be called for in timers of high demand, and reduce the need for expensive balancing infrastructure and resources. For these reasons, domestic electricity flexibility is necessary to achieve a fully renewable energy system. We thus deem it of high importance to accurately assess its impact through a randomized controlled trial.