Now you can monitor how inexperienced the UK’s power is, moment-to-moment, by means of our new ‘carbon depth’ characteristic.
Do you know that coal-fired energy stations produce practically a bag of sugar’s price (900g) of soiled carbon to ship only one kWh of electrical energy?
The typical UK family produces greater than two sugar luggage price of carbon each night in July, and practically 4 per night in December. Collectively, that’s A LOT of carbon, particularly once we’re meant to be shifting in direction of a zero-carbon future within the subsequent 30 years.
We’ve provide you with a approach to let you know the way inexperienced the power coming into your own home is, moment-to-moment, so you may all the time make sustainable choices about when to energy on.
The brand new characteristic makes use of Nationwide Grid ESO’s carbon depth API along with IFTTT and Amazon’s Alexa, so you may all the time learn how inexperienced power is, simply by asking.
How does it work?
First, I hear you ask – I assumed all my electrical energy was inexperienced anyway?
All the ability you utilize throughout a whole 12 months is matched with inexperienced power being pumped onto the grid, however there’s no approach to get green-only electrons straight to your own home. (Learn extra about how we make your power inexperienced.)
The true-time power coming into your own home as you utilize it’s primarily based on the combination of sources being pumped into the grid at the moment. At sure instances of the day, there’s considerably extra soiled power entering into. At different instances, there’s extra inexperienced power.
If it’s actually windy, or if we’re basking in scorching climate, wind farms and photo voltaic panels will produce a load of energy, so the power combine within the grid will probably be ‘greener’ and fewer carbon intensive. Nonetheless, if it’s 6:30pm on a weekday, when individuals have come house to cook dinner dinner and companies are nonetheless open, the grid will normally should depend on additional fossil gasoline turbines to fulfill the far-higher demand, and the power combine will get dirtier.
The Nationwide Grid’s web site experiences on how carbon intensive the electrical energy that we’re utilizing is from one second to the subsequent, and so they have a public API which permits anyone to make use of that data. We expect that is fairly flipping cool. However until you are a severe power geek, you may not learn about it. Our new characteristic, integrating the Nationwide Grid’s API with our software program, means all anybody has to do is ask Alexa!
Utilizing Alexa and the IFTTT (If This, Then That), now you can obtain real-time updates that present how a lot carbon is being emitted by the power you’re utilizing.
Here is our new characteristic in motion:
“Alexa, ask Octopus, how inexperienced is power proper now?”
And Alexa would possibly reply…
“The power combine could be very inexperienced proper now and is made up of 55% wind, 18% nuclear, 12% photo voltaic, 5% gasoline. Every kWh of power generated leads to 53 g CO2 being emitted.”
So, because of our integration, at any given second, now you can ask Alexa to learn how inexperienced your power is, what fuels are powering your own home, and select to run your home equipment primarily based on that.
You too can discover out when power is greenest and dirtiest for the day forward, that will help you plan.
“Alexa, ask Octopus: what time is the bottom carbon depth as we speak?”
And he or she’ll inform you when the greenest and dirtiest instances to run home equipment are that day, for instance:
- “The power combine was at its greenest at 1am as we speak and was made up of 65% wind, 22% nuclear, 8% gasoline and 5% hydro. Every kWh of power generated resulted in 31 grams CO2 being emitted
- “The power combine will probably be at its dirtiest at 7pm as we speak and will probably be made up of 75% gasoline, 8% wind, 7% biomass and 5% hydro. Every kWh of power generated will lead to 346 grams CO2 being emitted.”
It’s a fast and straightforward approach to get fascinated by the true influence of your power use. Why energy your tumble dryer with majority gas-powered electrical energy at 7pm, when you can energy it with wind power at 1am?
Taking the instance above (and assuming the common tumble dryer makes use of about 3.3 kWh every cycle) you can save a sugar bag’s price of carbon simply by altering once you change on.
Here is just a few totally different questions you may ask Alexa…
- Alexa, ask Octopus what time is the best carbon depth as we speak?
- Alexa, ask Octopus what time is the bottom carbon depth tomorrow?
- Alexa, ask Octopus what time is the best carbon depth tomorrow?
- Alexa, ask Octopus what’s the carbon depth at
- Alexa, ask Octopus what’s the carbon depth at
- Alexa, ask Octopus how inexperienced is power now?
- Alexa, ask Octopus how inexperienced is electrical energy now?
- Alexa, ask Octopus how soiled power is now?
- Alexa, ask Octopus how a lot renewable power is there now?
- Alexa, ask Octopus how a lot renewable electrical energy is there now?
- Alexa, ask Octopus what’s the proportion of renewable power now?
- Alexa, ask Octopus what’s the proportion of renewable electrical energy now?
Why not go additional?
Begin automating your own home…
The greenest power instances are sometimes in a single day, or when most individuals are out in the course of the day. To save lots of customers waking up at 3am, we have built-in with IFTTT (If This, Then That) to allow individuals to arrange easy directions to automate good home equipment to run on the greenest instances.
All you must do is head to IFTTT – it’s free – and allow an applet that may run a machine when carbon depth is lowest.
Discover ways to arrange your personal applets on our weblog.
We’re on a mission to vary the world’s consumption of power, and so whether or not you’re with us or every other power supplier, this data is out there to everyone. Anybody can allow Alexa’s Octopus Vitality ‘Ability’, and ask when it’s the greenest time to make use of energy.
It is a easy, accessible approach of letting you uncover how inexperienced power actually works, and get you used to creating small adjustments to avoid wasting carbon.
Need to profit from avoiding peak power instances?
Go ‘agile’ and get the greenest power for least expensive
For patrons who ARE capable of shift a whole lot of their power use away from the dirtiest instances of day, we now have an extremely cool tariff that really rewards you financially for utilizing power within the greenest approach doable.
On agileOctopus, the worth of your energy updates each half an hour primarily based on the wholesale value of power, with all of your day’s costs printed at 4pm the day earlier than. Which means throughout off-peak hours, (when demand is decrease and the grid greener), power could be tremendous low-cost, however when the grid is busier (and due to this fact extra soiled power must be fired up), it’s dearer. This tends to work out less expensive general when in comparison with normal tariffs.
One in all our good Agile clients Man has put collectively an investigation into the connection between power costs and carbon depth. Learn his piece right here.
The final rule that the ‘least expensive’ instances of the day are additionally the greenest signifies that we will actually go on the fee advantages of being an engaged, inexperienced power person to clients.
Should you’re eager to take advantage of Agile and automate your own home to run in a extra environmentally pleasant approach, try this IFTTT weblog for easy directions! Automated instructions (for instance ‘run my scorching water on the lowest carbon depth’) make life a lot simpler, and so they additionally assist non-agile clients who don’t have time to commonly examine the grid’s power combine, however nonetheless need to optimise their home equipment to do as a lot good by the setting as doable.
There’s a profit to us, in addition to to you and to the planet. We would like our clients to make use of off-peak electrical energy as a result of it’s greenest, to assist them use much less peak interval (excessive wholesale value) power.
