Valts Grintals, product marketing lead at Kaluza
Crisis as a catalyst
The energy crisis has underscored the need for greater agility and digital resilience in energy retail. Week after week, market volatility has provided fresh examples of ailing business processes arising from retailers’ outdated software. Average customer call waiting times increased by up to 75% and ‘National Meter Reading Day’ on 31st March saw a fourteen-fold increase in online account log-ins, with many apps and websites crashing as a result. Next year, retailers’ digital strategies will be brought into sharp focus as they continue to navigate market turbulence.
The EV services market will spice up as industries converge
Today, most major energy retailers are now offering propositions tailored for at-home smart EV charging and the UK is leading the way. This year we’ve seen automakers working on more comprehensive services for EV driver needs with the ambition of catching-up with Tesla.
Markets are moving beyond the ‘classic’ time-of-use tariffs and V2G is gaining further momentum with new and expanded programmes in the UK and beyond. 2023 will bring exciting innovation to the EV user experience as these new revenue streams take shape. Look out for more comprehensive offers that bundle home and public charging, and new energy services being launched by automakers.
Distributed flexibility finally gets its time to shine
2022 has been a sobering year for energy markets around the world – from extreme weather to geopolitical effects on energy supply and costs. A ‘silver lining’, though, is how these events have led to domestic flexibility being activated as a valuable tool in the grid’s arsenal, after years of pilots proving its worth. The National Grid ESO’s Demand Flexibility Service program is a brilliant opportunity for customers to actively participate in balancing the grid and earn money through energy efficiency measures.
In 2023, the industry will build on this momentum to accelerate decarbonisation and bolster system resilience. Increasing customers’ engagement with their energy usage will drive adoption of innovative technologies and solutions that further enhance the value of grid-edge distributed flexibility.
Rebecca Dibb-Simkin, chief marketing officer at Octopus Energy
The rise of onshore wind
Onshore wind is one of the cheapest forms of energy we can build quickly, helping secure energy independence and bring down energy bills. From 2023 it will be possible again to build more onshore wind turbines for communities that want them. We’ll expand our revolutionary Fan Club model to provide cheaper energy to even more people living near our local wind turbines.
Gas boilers and petrol-guzzling cars going the way of the dinosaur
We’ll see an increasing shift to the electrification of our economy. This means switching gas boilers for super-efficient heat pumps to heat our homes, and switching petrol-guzzling cars for electric vehicles (EVs), all increasingly powered by renewable electricity when it’s readily available.
Customers helping to balance the grid
2022 proved for the first time that customers can balance the grid in a massive way, while bringing down their bills as a result – and this trend will continue into 2023. Octopus Energy’s ‘Saving Sessions’ scheme and others enabled by the National Grid ESO’s new ‘Demand Flexibility Service’ are allowing customers to get paid for shifting energy usage out of peak times – and this will run until the end of winter.
Homes with zero energy bills
The cost of living crisis has shown how important it is to be innovative in how we look at homes and energy bills in the future. We’ve pioneered a new concept which means new-build homes can be kitted out to exist with zero energy bills – and we’re looking to expand this proposition to hundreds more houses next year.