Evaluation and findings by Jaye Cribb, Igor Gotlibovych and David Sykes.
Key findings
- As of Wednesday 18th March, UK home vitality consumption modified markedly from earlier patterns as folks stayed residence all through the day.
- As much as 30% of households have modified consumption sample markedly (word non-changers will embody retirees, houses the place one member is often residence all day, key staff who’re persevering with to work out of residence)
- Amongst households with modified patterns, common electrical energy payments are growing between £1.34 and £2.85 per week and fuel payments between £1.65 and £1.93 (assuming they pay the identical degree as the federal government value cap). Observe that fuel consumption will fall quickly because the climate improves.
Government Abstract
The week commencing sixteenth March noticed a speedy escalation in measures designed to curb the unfold of Covid 19. On Monday sixteenth, the federal government issued recommendation for everybody to keep away from social contact so far as attainable, to earn a living from home and to not go to pubs, golf equipment, eating places and theatres. By evaluating anonymised sensible meter utilization knowledge from 115,000 prospects from this week and final week, we’ve recognized a rise in daytime vitality utilization which we attribute to extra prospects being residence in the course of the day. This impact seems to begin on Tuesday after the announcement on Monday sixteenth and turns into extra pronounced by way of to Thursday.
Vitality utilization on weekdays elevated by between 2-4% throughout the entire group of shoppers because of the measures. We’ve used two approaches to try to isolate the affect on these prospects who’ve stayed at residence with the beneath outcomes.
Electrical energy
Technique | Share of shoppers | Common incremental utilization (kWh per day) | Common incremental utilization (%) | Value of vitality (p/kWh) | Common incremental price per working week |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
All prospects common | 100% | 0.5 | 4% | 17.80 | £0.45 |
Combination technique | 30% | 1.5 | 13% | 17.80 | £1.34 |
Constant increasers technique | 17% | 3.2 | 32% | 17.80 | £2.85 |
Fuel
Technique | Share of shoppers | Common incremental utilization (kWh per day) | Common incremental utilization (%) | Value of vitality (p/kWh) | Common incremental price per working week |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
All prospects common | 100% | 2.4 | 4% | 3.50 | £0.42 |
Combination technique | 25% | 11 | 20% | 3.50 | £1.93 |
Constant increasers technique | 8% | 9.4 | 20% | 3.50 | £1.65 |
Knowledge
For this report we’ve used anonymised half hourly sensible meter readings gathered from 115,000 prospects from the week commencing Monday sixteenth March. We evaluate this knowledge to readings from the identical cohort of shoppers from the week commencing Monday ninth March.
To make sure the 115,000 prospects have been consultant of UK home customers, we in contrast them to Elexon’s commonplace load profiles that are used to estimate utilization for purchasers with out sensible meters. The Octopus Sensible meter prospects are famous to have barely greater than common consumption however comply with a really comparable form all through the day to Elexon’s deemed profiles. The upper nighttime utilization is accounted for by the presence of economic system 7 prospects within the Octopus Sensible Meter group.
Common impact throughout all prospects
To grasp the affect on UK home vitality consumption as a result of extra of the inhabitants working from residence we in contrast the consumption of our sensible meter prospects in the course of the week of sixteenth March with the week prior. The beneath plots present the common vitality utilization profiles of our sensible meter prospects together with the full utilization per buyer every day. In each electrical energy and fuel we see comparable patterns:
- Monday confirmed no signal of elevated daytime consumption
- Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday present growing daytime consumption presumably as extra prospects earn a living from home
- Friday exhibits barely lowered daytime consumption will increase maybe as Friday is a extra widespread day to earn a living from home in a typical week
- On essentially the most pronounced day, Wednesday, the shoppers used a median of 4.3% extra electrical energy and 4.6% extra fuel.
Fuel consumption was corrected for climate and seasonality by multiplying the consumption on week sixteenth by the ratio of Xoserve’s LPA coefficients for every weekday.
Figuring out the impact of those that did earn a living from home
The ~4% will increase reported above are for the entire group of sensible meter prospects, a lot of whom could not but have modified their consumption behaviour. The sign we see above is subsequently a diluted impact of these prospects who’re spending extra time of their houses and those that haven’t modified behaviour. To have the ability to successfully plan for any elevated utilization and spending on home vitality, we have to disaggregate the 2 teams so we will estimate the elevated consumption of these prospects who are actually working from residence.
Within the absence of any labelled knowledge, this poses a problem. The difficulty being {that a} single buyer’s consumption profile is stochastic. There’s a pure variation in a buyer’s utilization profile week on week no matter any underlying behavioural change. That is illustrated by the plot of 10 randomly chosen prospects beneath. With out labelled knowledge, deciding on who of those we expect has modified behaviour and began working from residence is very subjective. Beneath we take two approaches to try to isolate the working from residence cohort and estimate their elevated vitality consumption.
Combination mannequin
For every buyer we outline two variables:
- X = their vitality consumption between 9am and 5pm on a given weekday in week commencing ninth March
- Y = their vitality consumption between 9am and 5pm on the identical weekday in week commencing sixteenth March
The plot beneath exhibits the distributions of X and Y for all prospects:
To estimate the proportion of shoppers staying at residence and the way a lot further they used, we simulated a proportion of shoppers p staying at residence with an elevated consumption ΔQ. We selected the mix of p and ΔQ that minimised the Kullback-Leibler divergence between our precise distribution and our simulated distribution. The beneath plot exhibits the KL divergence plotted towards p and ΔQ for electrical energy. From this we infer a greatest estimate of 30% of shoppers staying residence utilizing a median of 1.5 kWh further throughout 9am – 5pm.
The most effective match simulation is plotted beneath:
The identical method was taken for seasonally corrected fuel consumption. A abstract of outcomes is proven beneath:
Combination technique outcomes | Electrical energy | Fuel |
---|---|---|
Estimated proportion of shoppers staying at residence | 30% | 25% |
Estimated enhance in consumption 9am-5pm | 1.5 kWh | 11.0 kWh |
Constant increasers mannequin
To try to isolate these prospects who stayed at residence we used a crude rule of choosing prospects who confirmed elevated 9am-5pm consumption for all 4 days Tuesday to Friday.
For electrical energy:
- 15% of shoppers (17,000) fulfilled these standards. Beneath exhibits their comparability of the week of sixteenth March vs the earlier week
- These prospects present a ~30% enhance in day by day consumption
For fuel:
- 8% of shoppers (7,800) fulfilled these standards. Beneath exhibits their comparability of the week of sixteenth March vs the earlier week
- These prospects present a 20% enhance in day by day consumption
Abstract of outcomes
From the entire group common, we see a noticeable development in greater home vitality utilization in the course of the day. There isn’t any good technique to determine which prospects are staying at residence and the way a lot further vitality they’re utilizing. We’ve utilized two strategies to try to isolate the sign from these prospects staying residence and get the beneath findings.
Electrical energy
Technique | Share of shoppers | Common incremental utilization (kWh per day) | Common incremental utilization (%) | Value of vitality (p/kWh) | Common incremental price per working week |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
All prospects common | 100% | 0.5 | 4% | 17.80 | £0.45 |
Combination technique | 30% | 1.5 | 13% | 17.80 | £1.34 |
Constant increasers technique | 17% | 3.2 | 32% | 17.80 | £2.85 |
Fuel
Technique | Share of shoppers | Common incremental utilization (kWh per day) | Common incremental utilization (%) | Value of vitality (p/kWh) | Common incremental price per working week |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
All prospects common | 100% | 2.4 | 4% | 3.50 | £0.42 |
Combination technique | 25% | 11 | 20% | 3.50 | £1.93 |
Constant increasers technique | 8% | 9.4 | 20% | 3.50 | £1.65 |
The combination technique is more likely to be an underestimation of how a lot further vitality some households are utilizing because it fashions all keep at residence households with the identical incremental consumption. The constant increasers technique is more likely to overestimate how a lot further vitality some households are utilizing because it analyses the cohort with the strongest sign.
If you’re making use of these outcomes to ahead projections of vitality consumption or to buyer segmentation for invoice reduction you will need to be cognisant that:
- The outcomes are derived from one week of observations and while we don’t count on the sample to alter, the magnitudes of change will rely closely on the temperature
- The sign seems to be growing with time as society quickly adjustments its behavioural patterns in response to the disaster
- Though now we have lowered the incremental utilization to a single quantity, in actuality it’s a distribution with some prospects utilizing way over the common acknowledged right here and others utilizing much less
- The character and magnitude of change in vitality utilization is unlikely to be simply attributed to obviously outlined demographic segments. It’s pervasive throughout society and the magnitude of change will likely be a perform of the family behaviour and heating and units within the the house