The forgotten pleasure of the Mixed Grill

Reducing electricity demand is mentioned in HM Gov's Energy Security Plan, but only just. What's that got to do with mixed grills? Read on...

Green Edge readers of a certain age may remember the public information films of the early 1970’s instructing us – or, more likely, our parents – to switch off something. Some of these films may even have contributed to elements of culinary culture still lurking within the more, shall we say, nostalgia-driven eating establishments of today, like the mixed grill for example.

Equipped as it is with today’s behavioural insights, government messaging has, of course, moved on, although the use of nudges during the pandemic did, on occasion, perhaps seem more like an elbow planted squarely in the back. Arguably, some governments went even further than ours (careful with this link, you may find it distressing).

Ways of influencing domestic electricity demand today may be more advanced than the rather amusing films of yesteryear, but then so has the range and sophistication of the electrical kit creating that demand. Switching off the television doesn’t really happen these days, does it: it goes on to standby instead. Putting the lid down on the laptop means it’s simply sitting overnight ruminating to itself on your dollar – these authors are as guilty as others in that particular practice. Some studies estimate that more than one-fifth of domestic electricity may be going to waste on vampire devices.

Although the Government’s Energy Security Plan asserts that ‘[w]e will build on our ambitions set out in the British Energy Security Strategy and the Net Zero Strategy for increasing the overall share of domestic energy production and reducing energy demand’ (italics are ours), we were tempted to think that the reams of policy papers put out by DESNZ at the end of March tended to emphasise the plans for increasing volume and flexibility of supply, while glossing over measures to reduce demand. So, while we see plenty of commitments in the Energy Security Plan towards increasing and improving supply, the commitments to reducing demand seem somewhat sparse, seemingly limited to the old ‘let’s insulate everything’ chestnut.

Image: TGE from Powering Up Britain: Energy Security Plan (HM Gov Mar-23)

When we dig a little deeper, though, we find other efforts to reduce domestic demand are going on, particularly in the area of demand flexibility. In particular, the Energy Security Plan points to the National Grid Electricity System Operator’s (ESO) Demand Flexibility Service (DFS) which was trialled for the first time last winter and ‘helped ensure healthy operating margins were maintained on the electricity system [and] demonstrated the potential of managing demand flexibly to bolster energy security, as well as the willingness of consumers to participate’.

Government’s support for DFS also makes an appearance in its response to the Skidmore Review of Net Zero, where it includes in its response to recommendation 36 that ‘Government has committed to addressing barriers to deployment for technologies that provide flexibility, including demand side flexibility, and will continue to deliver actions set out in the 2021 Smart Systems and Flexibility Plan’.

For those of you who don’t already know (although, as an intelligent audience, you probably do, so please forgive us for this next bit), DFS is an example of demand side flexibility (DSF), which refers to the ability of consumers to adjust their energy demand in response to changes in energy supply, grid conditions, or market signals. Around the world, DSF is becoming increasingly important as renewable energy sources - which are fantastic when the winds blow, the sun shines or the tides run - are integrated into electricity grids, making them cleaner but more prone to fluctuations. By enabling consumers to adjust their energy consumption in response to these fluctuations, DSF can help to balance the grid, reducing the need for costly new infrastructure and improving overall efficiency and reliability of the system. There you go - end of DSF101.

Denmark, which already derives something like two-thirds of its electricity from renewable sources and is aiming for 100% by 2030, is already one of the leaders in DSF and is looking further and further into its future market mechanics, including consumer markets for buying and selling demand. Japan, with only four of its 42 nuclear reactors restarted since the whole lot were shut down in 2011 in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, and with heavy investment in new solar power, is likewise going for DSF in a big way.

Meanwhile countries like the US and Australia are making strides towards virtual power plants (VPP), like this one in South Australia - where there is, admittedly, a lot of sun – which is aiming to make solar-equipped homeowners part of the grid itself. Having experienced the loadshedding downside of an ageing and – allegedly – corrupt coal-dominated energy system in South Africa recently, baby steps of the type that Cape Town is taking towards VPP can’t come soon enough; although our own observation is that the average Cape Town roofscape is still a long way off being able to respond to the opportunity being presented there.

A North-West facing roofscape in Seapoint, Cape Town, SA. Apart from the hotel in the foreground, no other solar panels to be seen. Image: TGE.

So, what is the state of DSF here in the UK? Well, as you may already know, ESO’s Demand Flexibility Service (DFS) was trialled by Octopus Energy last winter and ESO itself has just completed a series of deep dive stakeholder workshops as part of figuring out next winter’s (2023-24) offering. We looked in on some of the workshops as interested numpties and gave a jolly good listening to talk on things like baselining typical MPAN (Meter Point Administration Number) consumption and the ABVSD (Applicable Balancing Services Volume Data) process applied to HH (Half-Hourly) Settled and non HH Settled volumes. But in amongst the technical stuff, we noted that consumer feedback on last winter’s trial is due during the summer to understand how and why consumers participated and identify the barriers to participation. There’s also to be an analysis of the smart meter data from the participating households.

Consumer factors in feedback DFS Winter Trial 2022-23. Image: TGE adapted from ESO.

Ah, smart meters, now there’s a thorny subject. They’re key to the service and ESO tells us that, at the moment, DFS only works with half-hour meters. And while these are mandatory for, say, business sites using 100kW or more, smart meters of any type remain optional for domestic users.  So, given the chatter about privacy concerns, remote switching to prepayments, silly readings and the general delays and difficulties in the rollout, the opportunity – if opportunity there be – for domestic smart meter customers to take part in the potential upside of a future DFS market gets lost in the noise…

…which gets us back to our original point at the head of this post about Government messaging. We’ve said this before but will repeat it here: in our opinion it’s less than clear about this and many other parts of the Net Zero discussion. Even the mantra rolled out across the Powering Up Britain document suite that ‘Energy Security and Net Zero are two sides of the same coin’ is, when we stop to think about it, a good slogan but somewhat obscure in its meaning. Energy security refers to the uninterrupted availability of energy at an affordable price. Net zero on the other hand, refers to the balance between greenhouse gas emissions produced and removed from the atmosphere. It’s only when our thinking drops to the next level – that energy security is all about ensuring a reliable, affordable supply of energy from diverse home-grown sources which we have legislated to reduce to Net Zero emissions, that the two coins become one.

Perhaps the Government assumes we can all figure that out for ourselves and can similarly appreciate why we all have to change our behaviours to reduce demand. Or perhaps it’s leaving the messy citizen engagement part to experts like the Ashden and others with their community engagement programmes. But while HM Gov seems to love anything to do with technology and the mantra of Britain as a world innovator – like support for battery storage, for instance – the softer side of demand reduction and smoothing tend, in our humble opinions at least, to get overlooked.

Not that demand is going to reduce, mind you, or not in real terms at least. Our chart below shows historical and projected energy demand for residential energy in relation to other sectors and indicates the future effect of increasing electrification in areas like home EV charging and heat pumps…

 Image: TGE using Final Energy Demand data from HM Gov (Annex F).

…and that’s before we even start to think about the disruptive home technologies of the future and their uncertain power needs. Like home quantum computing, perhaps.