We love finding ways to save our customers money while protecting the planet. Incentivising small changes in when people consume energy is a way to tick both of these boxes.
At peak times of day, renewable sources can’t meet the national demand for electricity. So, the grid relies on fossil fuels to keep things running.
Saving Sessions help to reduce this reliance. Over winter, we paid our businesses to use less energy at peak times. That meant the grid staying greener while they reaped the financial rewards.
Our first round of Saving Sessions has just ended, so we’re delving into the data to showcase the impact our business customers had.
Saving Sessions captures what Octopus Energy for Business is all about
If we had to summarise our favourite things in a sentence, it’d look something like this:
Using tech to lower businesses’ bills and make energy greener.
So getting our customers involved in Saving Sessions was a no-brainer. It meant:
- creating a system to alert customers when there’s a session coming up
- paying businesses to use less energy at peak times
- to lower businesses’ bills ✅
- reducing the grid’s need for non-renewable energy sources when demand is high
- and make energy greener ✅
We knew that lots of our business customers would want to make the most of this opportunity
So we began spreading the word in October 2022, ready to launch in mid-November.
Between then and March 2023, hundreds of changed their energy consumption, earned Octopoints and reduced the burden on the overstretched energy grid.
🚨 #SavingSessions alert 🚨
📅 22/11 17:30-18:30
🤑 Earn 🐙1800 (worth £2.25) for every unit of power cut down vs normal
🎁 Super Saver Bonuses:
👉 1 customer wins 🐙400k for opting in
👉 STREAK: Opt in to your 2nd Session and get:
+🐙100
+8 chances to win the 🐙400k prize.— 🐙⚡️ Saving Sessions Alerts (@SavingSessions) November 21, 2022
The results are in
It’s important to use data to underline what we do. So, while our customers were busy making money, we were eagerly collecting information about the impact of the sessions.
This is what we found:
801 of our business customers took part
That’s around 13% of eligible customers. This is a helpful sample size for us to understand the impact and potential of Saving Sessions.
On average, 47% of these participated in each Saving Session.
They used 2511kwh less at peak times
That’s just below the average UK house’s electricity usage for a whole year. It’s the equivalent of charging 131,555 smartphones.
This all happened over just 13 sessions, each of which lasted 1-2 hours. We think that means a big win for the grid – and potential for even bigger wins in the future.
We paid out £6549.36 to businesses
That’s more than £500 per session – and around £17 per active participant.
Of course, they weren’t just being paid to not use energy. They were also saving the money they would have spent on it. So, overall, it’s an even bigger win.
These results show why flexibility should be part of energy’s future
The electricity grid isn’t suited to the way we use energy today. But this capacity to shift demand represents a big, positive step towards modernising it.
It proves that it’s possible to move away from the grid’s outdated reliance on dirty energy – and towards responsive, clean, green energy for everyone.
Because businesses tend to use more energy than the average home, we want to make sure they’re at the forefront of these changes. So, we’ll keep on developing tech-forward products like Saving Sessions to make energy work better for our customers.
The planet – and their bank balances – will benefit as a result.
