https://octopus.energy/blog/the-big-dirty-turn-down-free-electricity-trial/

"We’re working with National Grid ESO, the people who run the electricity network, to trial a big national ‘turndown’, where households come together to consciously use less energy at certain times – and get rewarded with free power for their efforts."

What do people think about this? Anyone tried it?

Full disclosure: I've no connection to Octopus, not a customer.

Posted By: RexCan I really believe they will give me free power?

Read the article linked to.

If you export the trial is not available to you.

The trial's about half-way through now, I think. Has anybody signed up, or know anybody who has?

I'm glad somebody is participating.

Posted By: derekeFirst time we did it was a week ago, between 4:30 and 6:30pm I had to reduce my usage by 40% and then they would give me the rest of the energy from that time period for free. I turned my heat pump off for an hour and hit the target

Does that mean that essentially your only usage during that period is your heat pump? If you started cooking, for example, I doubt it would be possible.

It's not scalable in this manual way but I think it is a good demonstration of what is achievable with demand side management.

I agree about the difficulty of scaling using manual intervention, but it's difficult for me to see how it could be managed automatically. How could it know what appliances particular individuals were prepared to turn off at any specific time for example? Maybe you had guests coming that evening, or maybe you were going out, or were ill; that would make a difference. It would take quite a lot of savings to pay for the 'smart' automation methinks.

Posted By: WillInAberdeenAgreed in general, but lots of people seem to be getting WiFi connected thermostats which Octopus have demonstrated they can talk to by ITTT. Likewise smart car chargers, which are the other major 'interruptible' load people will have. (Can't see anyone will interrupt cooking, showering or TV). And smart meters continue to roll out.

With those hardware in place, it's a minor expense to make the software join together to interrupt them at the right time.

Thanks for the pointer. I wasn't aware that Octopus and IFTTT were 'a thing' :) But as far as I can see it's just an API integration. It still requires (or permits, depending on your point of view) the user to write the linkage (i.e. program) between the two.

In particular I still don't see any way the software can know when you have guests or are going to be out, or are planning to have your annual bath etc. So I don't see how it changes anything, barring Putin-esque style legislation.

People will only take that up if there's enough in it for them. I think the main purposes of these trials is a) for Octopus to learn what % of their customers will turn off for how many pence; b) to raise awareness that this is an option.

Agreed to point (a) and I wouldn't be terribly interested by the current trial from a financial point of view but I don't see how point (b) can work without some publicity and I haven't seen any.

Posted By: djhDoes that mean that essentially your only usage during that period is your heat pump? If you started cooking, for example, I doubt it would be possible.

I must have just cooked a small meal that night
Actually I have no idea how much energy we use cooking. I just looked it up and we actually reduced our usage by 45% or 2.3kWh. I guess the heat pump isn't on all the time anyway but making sure it was off for an hour let us hit the target.

In terms of how we go forward managing loads I thought this "packetized" mechanism had the most promise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU3woCaFSZs

You're right: on Friday I made a roast dinner for 5 people, with all the trimmings, and used about 5kWh. The oven was hot for several hours and then every ring was used on the hob. Saturday, I made risotto and veg for 5 and it used only 1kWh, two rings for three quarters of an hour. Stir-fried-noodles today, will be faster still and use half the heat, I expect.

The biggest eye opener from our smart meter has been just how energy-hungry our (inherited) fan oven is. I try to use the oven much less now, and try to combine things, like baking cakes while the oven is already hot from roasting a meal, as my grandmother did.

If we were on a time of use tariff, we might try roasting things in the daytime or late in the evening and just reheating them at evening meal time.

Our smart meter provides electricity readings for every minute for the past hour with 0.1kWh precision, logged by the Chamaeleon CAD over WiFi, but previous data are hourly totals so much less precise than Ed's.

Posted By: JontiIf there is a real desire to get people to reduce their usage then wouldn't you drop the standing charge tariff to a minimum and increase the unit rate? Or another way would be for the government to set a low rate for minimum use and then free market for the rest.

Yup, good ideas both.

On a different aspect or resource usage, I read the other day that in areas where they declare a potential shortage, water companies can insist on fitting meters to all houses. So if they're really serious about trying to get people to use less water, it seems the first step is already available to them. Since I haven't heard of any of them enforcing this, I assume there isn't really any water shortage at all.

Posted By: Ed DaviesThere's a real cost to providing a connection

The cost of providing the connection is met by the person applying for the connection (it's more complicated but that's the basic principle). The cost of maintaining it and the cost of servicing meters etc is borne by a levy AFAIK. How that all gets reflected in customer's bills is pretty arbitrary. The suppliers have enough long-term historical data to be able to carve it up pretty much as they wish with minimal risk of miscalculation.

Given that many people (particularly the more wealthy) are moving towards minimal use of the grid with PV, batteries, etc

I doubt that it's 'many' measured as a fraction of total customers. Batteries are absolutely miniscule as a proportion. Even solar panels are only 3.3% of the total according to https://www.theecoexperts.co.uk/solar-panels/popularity-of-solar-power so I think your suggestion is an easily demolished strawman.

Looked at from an economic motivation point of view, Jonti's suggestion is of obvious benefit to people with low income/resources. It may also be positive in motivating some of the other 96.7% of people to try to reduce their consumption, which is a good thing, even as we also hope that more people will replace gas boilers with heat pumps and thus increase their usage.

I don't much care about the utilities' motivations; they are or should be a disguised public service acting in the public's interest.

Posted By: owlman" disguised public service "

Does that mean Nationalised or something else?

It means they are an essential public service and need to be closely regulated as such but the network of competing companies seems to work reasonably well in this area so there's no need for nationalisation. The collapse of some suppliers who clearly didn't understand the sea they were swimming in isn't fundamentally significant, I don't think.

Sorry, no idea what you're getting at.

I'm not suggesting anything of the kind. I was simply completing my response to the points that Ed made.