Welcome to Flexibility
Flexibility is about changing when we use electricity to times when the grid is less busy or when we have the most solar and wind power. This might mean reducing your use on a winter’s evening and using more electricity when the wind is blowing or sun is shining.
Electric vehicle charge point
Heat pumps and storage heaters
Battery storage
You can participate with other devices, but the savings might not be as high.
You’re also contributing to a wider plan – to ‘decarbonise’ electricity by 2030. By being flexible about when we use electricity, we reduce how much we need from gas power stations and increase our reliance on renewable energy.
In many areas of the country, your flexibility will also be helping other customers to connect to the grid – from new housing to people switching to electric vehicles or heat pumps.
How do I get involved?
One way is through your current energy supplier. Try searching for ‘time of use’ or ‘smart’ tariffs. There are also a number of innovative companies offering simple apps. You don’t need to switch supplier to sign up with them. See the list at the end of this page.
If you’ve had solar panels or a battery installed recently, you can find your Export MPAN here.
There are a few different ways to get involved:
You can sign up for alerts from your supplier or a smart energy platform for when the grid is particularly busy or when there’s ‘too much’ renewable power. If you’re able to respond, you’ll save some money, but you can also simply ignore the alert.
You can sign up for an electricity tariff with different prices at different times. Some of these tariffs provide fixed times and prices, making it easy for you to plan your usage. Others might offer more chances to save, but with prices which change more often. Either way, you can schedule things around those prices – for example, running the dishwasher overnight. To make it even easier to save money you can use tools like IFTTT (If This, Then That) to automate things!
You can agree for your energy supplier or another company to manage when certain appliances switch on and off. You stay in control, for example of how warm you need your house or when you need your car charged, while they handle the details. Typically, you’ll also be able to override the settings if you need to.
Who to work with
UK Power Networks is an electricity distribution company that looks after the cables and wires that bring electricity into people’s homes. We don’t supply or generate electricity. We work with trusted and respected third parties like energy suppliers, charge point operators or technology platforms who have a direct relationship with homes and businesses.
Below are some of the companies we’re currently working with, whose customers provide us with flexibility to help communities like yours adopt clean energy. You can choose to work with companies that aren’t on this list, but you might not get the full value of your flexibility.