As a few papers have recently reported, we’ve bought 5,000 energy-efficient electric blankets and are offering them free to the most needy and vulnerable households.
Why have we been giving out free electric blankets?
One of our boffins realised that some customers were paying to heat their entire homes, even if they lived alone. He did some calculations and found out that where heating a whole home costs around £2 a day, an energy-efficient electric blanket can heat a person for just 4p an hour. This means an electric blanket is a vastly more cost-effective way to stay warm: particularly for people with mobility issues, for example, and spend a lot of time in one spot.
Modern electric blankets, used according to their instructions, are safe and energy efficient. A few months ago, we used our purchasing power to buy 5,000, and we’ve been offering them for free to customers we’ve identified would benefit most when they filled in our financial assistance tool. We’ve been really trying to target people who need a blanket most: so we haven’t offered one to every customer, and we’ve trie to keep it to one per home so that we can support as many people as possible.
The electric blanket scheme is now paused for this year, but will be resuming again in the lead up to Winter 2022.
