National Grid: Million sign up to energy-saving scheme as UK moves to swerve blackout

Octopus Energy says it dished out £1million to its customers who were paid to reduce their energy usage during the first four saving sessions. Nearly half a million of its customers have signed up, and a quarter of a million of those have taken part in four-hour-long test sessions. A fifth session was also completed on Monday night between 5-7pm. 

Collectively, they slashed the energy demand on the grid during each of these peak periods by over 100MW  – the same amount of energy that is produced by a gas power station in an hour.

In the first four sessions combined, the customers managed to take 450MWh of energy consumption out of peak times. According to Octopus Energy, that is the same amount of energy needed to fully charge one smartphone per UK household.

Alex Schoch, head of flexibility at Octopus Energy Group, said: “This is a massive milestone – across just four hours, we’ve been able to pay out £1 million to our customers. Normally, this money would have gone to businesses or dirty gas power plants to balance energy demand, instead, it’s helping people lower their energy bills this winter.”

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Article source: https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1710196/national-grid-energy-saving-blackouts-demand-flexibility-service