This weblog is outdated. The 2022-23 EQUINOX winter trial is over now. Go to our devoted 2023-24 EQUINOX web page to search out out what we learnt from the final trial, what’s occurring with EQUINOX this winter – and crucially, methods to get entangled!
Our flexibility staff work on amazingly geeky stuff to assist automate and optimise vitality use sooner or later inexperienced vitality system.
The most recent trial they’re engaged on is named EQUINOX, it is for purchasers with warmth pumps – designed to assist prospects earn £100 for serving to us and Nationwide Grid ED analysis cheaper, greener heating for all.
To tug it off, the crack-squad of ‘flexperts’ from Octopus’ Flexibility Workforce are becoming a member of forces with Nationwide Grid ED (a community operator, answerable for pumping electrical energy down the wires to your properties), a variety of different specialist organisations. Collectively, we’re investigating prospects’ potential to unlock the ‘flexibility’ we have to streamline the electrification of warmth, and bringing the advantages – decrease vitality payments and a greener grid – to individuals such as you and me.
What precisely is Equinox and the way does it work?
In the event you be part of the Equinox trial, all you must do is flip off your warmth pump for just a few hours on occasion – when the UK’s vitality combine is particularly soiled. Given the way in which warmth pumps work, this should not make your private home any much less snug, and we’ll pay you for getting concerned.
How does it work?
- Between December and April, we’ll often ask you to show off your warmth pump for 2 hours
- We’ll offer you a days’ discover (by electronic mail) to inform you after we’d such as you to show it off
- It’s all the time as much as you whether or not you participate or not
- You must be an Octopus Buyer with a related good meter and dwell in the proper space (lined by Nationwide Grid Electrical energy Distribution)
- We’ll ask you to fill out just a few fast questionnaires: one earlier than and one after the trial, and would possibly ask you a few questions alongside the way in which
And to your hassle you’ll earn round £100 credit score in your Octopus account over Winter
Switching off your warmth pump for just a few hours shouldn’t imply you’re any much less cosy.
As a result of warmth pumps heat your own home extra slowly and gently than boilers, you’ll be able to merely placed on the heating some time earlier than the 2 hour window to construct up heat, and return to heating your private home as soon as the occasion is over.
Restricted spots obtainable – tell us you’re up for it and we’ll be in contact in November with extra info.
Have a warmth pump of your individual?
In the event you’ve acquired a warmth pump, a wise meter we will connect with, and you reside in an eligible space, you’ll be able to register to affix the trial!
We’re now not accepting members for this winter, however in case you give us your particulars, we’ll contact you after we arrange our 2023/24 trial.
Be a part of cutting-edge analysis to assist the UK transfer to inexperienced warmth
In 2020, house heating (largely soiled fuel boilers) had been answerable for an eye-watering 19% of the UK’s whole carbon emissions. And as you would possibly count on, lowering our dependence on fuel is significant for hitting the UK’s Web Zero targets, and it couldn’t be extra essential as fuel costs undergo the roof. Fortuitously, there’s already a tried and examined different answer: warmth pumps.
These intelligent units are inexperienced, dependable, and extremely energy-efficient – and we’re investing hundreds of thousands to deliver reasonably priced warmth pumps into properties up and down the UK.
Electrifying heating will take an enormous quantity of carbon out of the ambiance, and it’s thrilling to see warmth pumps overcoming challenges left proper and centre: they’re getting cheaper to construct, set up, manufacture, and are simply able to heating the house to the identical temperatures as fuel boilers.
Nonetheless, all these warmth pumps will want energy, so Octopus’ Flex staff are additionally figuring out methods to handle the ensuing rise in electrical energy demand. With that in thoughts, we’ll must unlock extra flexibility on the grid, and by way of EQUINOX (the Equitable Novel Flexibility Alternate), Octopus’ flexperts shall be rewarding prospects for getting. They’re ensuring the trial reaches a broad cross-section of vitality customers so we will higher perceive how flexibility advantages a variety of properties. They’re additionally dedicated to making sure susceptible prospects and people experiencing gasoline poverty can profit too.
So what can we imply by ‘vitality flexibility’?
To present a little bit of background, our electrical grid should all the time be nicely balanced. Vitality provide (ie all of the electrons mills produce) and vitality demand (what everybody within the UK makes use of) should all the time match as much as keep away from energy cuts or injury to grid infrastructure. To perform healthily, the grid should be versatile, capable of ‘flip up’ and ‘flip down’ provide and demand to make sure they all the time match up. That wiggle room means the grid can adapt simply when both provide or demand modifications unexpectedly.
- One path to vitality flexibility includes adjusting vitality provide; turning vitality era ‘up’ or ‘down’ in keeping with demand. For years this has meant turning soiled fossil gasoline producing stations on when the nation begins to make use of extra vitality. However as we depart fossil fuels behind, this more and more means calling on batteries and different vitality storage units to launch any clear, inexperienced vitality they’ve been holding on to.
- However in a world powered by renewables, we additionally must flip flexibility on its head; we will not simply make the solar shine or the wind blow every time we would like. We are able to unlock big quantities of flexibility by encouraging individuals to regulate their vitality utilization in a means that traces up with the provision of inexperienced electrons. That is shopper flexibility.
This people-powered flexibility would possibly contain rewarding prospects with cheaper energy for utilizing vitality when the grid is chock stuffed with cheaper, greener renewables, and disincentivising vitality use when vitality is in excessive demand, the grid is harassed, and there’s a threat that the UK should activate extra fossil gasoline energy stations to satisfy that demand. (This occurs extra usually throughout the troublesome ‘day by day peak’ – between 4-7pm, when the solar is low, and demand is excessive).
Up to now, it was assumed that particular person individuals’s flexibility would not make a lot of a distinction to the broader grid. But a variety trials have proven that collective good vitality use could make a MASSIVE distinction. For instance, Octopus’ Crowdflex trial used good tariffs check the potential for home-energy flexibility and located that strange individuals might cut back the grid’s peak demand by a large 10%. That is precisely what EQUINOX hopes to discover on the subject of warmth pumps.
Classes from CrowdFlex: the UK’s largest home ‘demand-side’ flexibility research: technical degree 🌶️
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Octopus shall be drawing on the teachings from one other comparable trial: ‘Crowdflex’. Crowdflex revolved round utilizing innovative good tariffs like Agile Octopus and Octopus Go to discover the (big) potential for unlocking house vitality flexibility – as EQUINOX appears to be like to do with warmth pumps.
CrowdFlex was the primary section of a research investigating how households can assist steadiness the grid by shifting their electrical energy demand to match renewable vitality provide. In partnership with good charging platform Ohme, Octopus labored with Nationwide Grid ESO and Scottish & Southern Electrical energy Networks (SSEN) to analyse over 25,000 households’ vitality consumption patterns from 2020 onwards, offering perception concerning the methods behaviour will be influenced by worth indicators and quantify the worth of flexibility obtainable.
Households had been incentivised to shift their vitality consumption by way of worth indicators from our Agile and Go good tariffs (costs change each half an hour in keeping with the value of wholesale vitality, providing cheaper vitality when renewables are extra considerable). They had been additionally given directions from Ohme’s good EV chargers and cellular app. Huge Flip Up and Huge Flip Down occasions had been run to assemble information on participation charges and behavior patterns, they usually additionally checked out these good tariff prospects’ historic consumption patterns – aggregating and anonymising outcomes – to see what insights may very well be drawn.
The outcomes had been extremely highly effective: the info exhibits that households are responsive to cost indicators by way of time-of-use tariffs and that home shoppers can play an essential function in grid balancing providers. Additionally they confirmed that EVs shall be one of many largest contributors to people-powered flexibility.
Octopus used the outcomes to estimate the technical potential of the house vitality flexibility that households could possibly present the system throughout Nice Britain (GB) in 2030.
Clients on Octopus Vitality’s time-of-use electrical energy tariffs (Octopus Go and Agile Octopus) lowered their utilization throughout the night peak by 15-17%. Households with electrical vehicles slashed their utilization even additional, lowering demand in the identical timeframe by 23%.
Over the approaching decade, EV uptake within the UK relies to soar. In a ‘Excessive EV uptake state of affairs’, Octopus discovered that shopper flexibility might cut back ‘peak demand’ by as much as 10% (6.8GW), suggesting a 37GW demand flip up flexibility potential.
With that in thoughts, we additionally must issue within the progress in electrical energy demand from warmth pumps, and take a look at how that demand may very well be addressed by home flexibility…
So the place does EQUINOX are available in?
On condition that electrifying heating is ready to extend vitality demand, EQUINOX goals to offset that rise in vitality use by laying the foundations for a extra ‘versatile’ vitality system. Such a system would incentivise, encourage and allow individuals to ‘shift’ their heat-pump utilization in a means that grants the grid further flexibility.
In different phrases, EQUINOX prospects will save a ton of money if they will keep away from powering their warmth pumps when vitality is excessive demand, which is normally throughout the troublesome 4-7pm ‘day by day peak’ (when renewable electrons are usually more durable to come back by, vitality is dearer, and the grid comes below extra pressure).
Now, at a look, shifting your heating may appear inconvenient, however due to the way in which warmth pumps work it couldn’t be simpler. The place combi boilers are designed to be reactive (you say ‘heating on’ and the boiler will burn a great deal of soiled fossil fuels at a number of hundred levels to warmth your water up proper then and there), warmth pumps heat your water – and so your private home – gently, for longer, and far, far more effectively.
In reality, the longer and extra gently your warmth pump warms your own home, the extra environment friendly (and low-cost) it’s to take action. Which means in winter, you can begin heating your private home a number of hours earlier than you arrive house, take a break throughout any ‘peaks’ in demand, after which proceed heating your private home afterwards. That is precisely what EQUINOX will encourage individuals to do, rewarding them for shifting electrical heating to occasions when vitality demand is decrease (once more, normally outdoors the day by day 4-7pm ‘peak’).
At a time when fuel costs are excessive, trials like EQUINOX couldn’t be extra essential. On one degree, switching to electrical heating will clearly cut back our reliance on fuel as we ditch fuel boilers. However that’s not all. When electrical energy is in excessive demand and renewables are scarce, the Nationwide Grid usually has to show to costly fuel mills.
By shifting heat-pump utilization away from excessive demand – prospects will cut back their contribution to troublesome peaks and in doing so, the necessity for {the electrical} grid to activate as a lot fuel energy. This could assist prospects, and the grid, save very important money at a time when fuel costs are by way of the roof.
Dwelling vitality flexibility’s potential to scale back pressure on the electrical energy grid can also be set to take away the necessity for costly community upgrades. Because it stands, customer-driven flexibility, as pioneered by the EQUINOX trial, might save the UK £8bn a 12 months in keeping with the Nationwide Infrastructure Fee.
This trial will give us massively helpful perception into shopper behaviour, and the potential for incentivising flexibility. It is going to take placeover the subsequent three years, starting in March 2022 and ending in December 2025. EQUINOX plans to enroll over 1,000 members by 2023, not less than 500 of which shall be Octopus Vitality prospects.
Laying the blueprint for a greener vitality system:
Octopus is dedicated to bringing the advantages of the inexperienced revolution to individuals such as you and me. From the Windy Day Fund to the Huge Soiled Flip Down, EQUINOX is barely the newest in a sequence of cutting-edge Octopus trials, designed to reward individuals for getting concerned within the quest for a better, greener, fairer vitality system. At a time when vitality is already costly, trials like this – which cut back our dependence on soiled, costly fuel – couldn’t be extra essential. Watch this area.
