SMS and Oxfordshire County Council have received £5.3 million from the UK government to improve smart and flexible energy in UK households.
The government offered this funding as part of the Alternative Energy Markets Innovation Programme. The project itself aims to engage up to 50,000 homes and small businesses in Oxfordshire, to demonstrate how giving consumers more information about their energy use can help more people to start using Energy Smart Appliances (ESAs).
ESAs are devices that include batteries, heat pumps or intelligent white goods that can automatically adjust when they use electricity based on when electricity prices are lower, or it would be less environmentally damaging to use electricity.
Those involved in the project will be made aware of their energy consumption via an app and given the opportunity to upgrade their property with smart technology through an affordable monthly subscription, avoiding the high upfront costs usually necessary.
They will also have the option to switch to a special time-of-use tariff that charges less during off-peak hours.
Participants who choose to install a smart appliance will then be able to explore the effects of the UK’s Demand Flexibility Service (DFS), as supplied by National Grid ESO.
The first DFS event was held on 29 November 2023 between 17:00 and 18:30 and was immediately followed by a second test on 1 December 2023.
Across both events, participants delivered an average of 497MWh energy reduction across each hour and a half session, enough to power nearly 1.5 million homes across the duration of each event, ESO said.
The scheme’s success was further proven in January 2024 when it was confirmed that ESO’s DFS trial for 2023/24 has delivered over 2,507MWh of saved capacity across both the live and planned test events.
Alongside SMS and Oxfordshire Country Council, the trial – which aims to retrofit 1,000 Oxfordshire properties – will be delivered by a consortium of partners, including Samsung, My Utility Genius, Engage Consulting, Eliq and Rebel Energy.
Tom Woolley, smart product and strategy director at SMS, said: “This innovative project represents a landmark for our industry, as it will be the first-ever example of an energy supplier-agnostic approach towards engaging UK consumers with energy usage on a significant scale.
“By using energy data to understand consumer behaviour and the effectiveness of different propositions across alternative energy market scenarios, the project will also contribute valuable insights towards achieving the UK’s decarbonisation targets and accelerating the mass adoption of smart energy technologies.”
