Business works best when it follows some simple principles. Like making the most of your resources. Or being smart with what you use. Or working with whatever the days, seasons and weather bring.
We know these things to be true of agricultural businesses. Our product, Electric Match, applies these principles to your energy supply too.
Electric Match takes the electricity you generate and shares across your business’ sites. That means maximising your homegrown energy and lowering your bills.
We wanted to find out more about how Electric Match can benefit farms and agricultural businesses. So, we spoke to Alex Lowe – Head of Innovation at Octopus Energy for Business.
Alex Lowe – Head of Innovation at Octopus Energy for Business
Alex: Electric Match is all about making the most of your energy. We know lots of farms generate their own power, which is great. But, many have generation at one of their sites, but not others. So, these other sites have to rely on energy from the grid.
Electric Match solves this problem. It shares your homegrown electricity between your sites in real-time. When you use this energy, you don’t pay anything for it. This makes electricity cheaper, plus it means you can trace where it’s going from and to.
We call this ‘time-matching’. It’s having a big impact on our customers. One of them, a large agricultural company, found that one farm was often producing more electricity than it could use. Now, they share it with their other sites. As a result, they can use double the amount of energy that they generate. Which is great for their emissions and their bills.
At a glance: how Electric Match helps farms and agricultural businesses
- It lets you share your renewable energy across your business’ sites
- It makes it free to use the energy you generate, even if it comes from a different site
- By shifting your electricity usage to times of high generation, you make your bills lower
- This usage has lower carbon intensity than standard energy, which improves your environmental impact
- You have much more detailed oversight and reporting of your emissions
What’s the day-to-day like for Electric Match customers?
Alex: They’re in control of their energy usage. They know that when they use less energy than they produce, they don’t pay anything for it.
So, every day, they can decide when and where to use electricity so that it maximises capacity and minimises cost and emissions.
We often see customers arranging to do energy-intensive operations when their wind turbines or solar panels are producing lots of cheap, green electricity. Like running heavy machinery, for example. They can see when it’ll be free to use and make their plans accordingly.
What happens on a day when a farm doesn’t produce enough energy? Or produces too much?
Alex: Electric Match accounts for all these eventualities.
It’s hard for a business to generate enough electricity to power itself all the time, particularly across multiple sites. Sometimes, generation is just too low – solar panels are limited overnight and in the winter months when the days are shorter, for example.
So, if there’s a gap between demand and supply, we bridge it with our normal green Octopus electricity.
If someone produces more electricity than they can use, that’s not a problem either. We just sell that energy to the grid for them. So, they’re earning money on any excess power they make.
Spotlight on Frontier Agriculture’s Electric Match experience
Frontier has nearly 50 sites across England and Scotland. Of these, 10 have solar panels. With Electric Match, they’ve been sharing their solar output across their sites.
Let’s have a look at some key stats from their Electric Match experience:
- Frontier Agriculture has shared 800,000 kWh of homegrown electricity between their sites
- This adds up to 14% of their annual energy usage coming from excess solar generation at other locations
- All of this costs them nothing to use
- It has led to up to 16% savings on their monthly energy bills
Check out our case study on Frontier Agriculture for more information on how Electric Match is transforming their energy for the better.
You mentioned earlier about tracing energy. What does that mean for farm owners?
Alex: The agricultural industry knows what it means to understand your resources and use them responsibly. We want the same to be true of electricity – which means having transparency and understanding its source.
Electric Match provides a more specific way of tracking your business’ emissions. Normally, companies look at these on an annual basis. But, Electric Match lets you do this in a much more granular way: down to the half-hour. By knowing when and where your electricity sparks into life, you get much greater accuracy and transparency.
How can businesses join Electric Match?
Alex: I hoped this question would crop up!
It’s simple. Just head to the Electric Match homepage.
Here, they can find out more and get in touch with the Electric Match team.
