Thousands of British households could earn free electricity next weekend by cutting their power consumption for just two hours, as the country prepares for the deepest solar eclipse in almost three decades.
Octopus Energy, Britain’s largest energy supplier, is asking customers to reduce electricity use between 6pm and 8pm on Wednesday August 12, when the Moon will obscure up to 95 per cent of the Sun in parts of the UK.
Under its “Eclipse Power Down” initiative, households that successfully reduce consumption during the two-hour period will receive free electricity the following weekend. Participants will also be able to enter a competition to win fully installed solar panels, or £12,000 in cash.
The eclipse presents a particularly awkward moment for the electricity system. Solar generation will fall sharply just as millions of households return home and demand begins to rise.
Solar accounted for a record 14.4 per cent of Britain’s electricity generation last month, according to the figures supplied by Octopus, making the temporary loss of generation increasingly significant for the grid.
Without sufficient flexibility elsewhere, the shortfall could require additional gas-fired generation. But shifting household consumption could reduce the need to bring those plants online.
Octopus is encouraging customers to move routine activities such as washing, dishwashing and gaming outside the 6pm-8pm window.
The initiative illustrates a growing feature of Britain’s electricity market: consumers are increasingly being treated as a source of flexibility rather than simply passive users of power.
Rebecca Dibb-Simkin, Octopus’s chief customer officer, said households could help reduce the need for gas generation while being rewarded for changing their routines.
The company estimates British households could collectively provide as much as 13GW of flexible capacity through smart appliances, electric vehicles and home batteries.
The challenge is turning that theoretical capacity into something the grid can reliably use.
Octopus’s rewards programme, Octoplus, already has more than two million members and has distributed more than £11mn in rewards, including 20.5GWh of free electricity.
The eclipse will provide an unusually visible demonstration of the economics of flexibility: rather than building generation to cover every temporary shock, Britain can increasingly ask consumers to change when they use power.
For households, the proposition is simple. Delay the dishwasher, avoid the washing machine and get rewarded for helping keep the lights on.
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