Give up control of your thermostat in winter – and save money

Households with heat pumps who opt in to a proposed Government scheme could see their heating automatically turned down by their supplier as part of efforts to improve energy security amid concerns of blackouts.

Under the Smart Secure Electricity Systems scheme, energy firms such as Octopus Energy and British Gas will have the power to remotely pause and schedule customers’ heating to reduce the strain on the grid.

The electricity suppliers are set to be authorised to control heat pumps via the internet if plans set out under the former energy secretary Ed Miliband go ahead. However, customers will have the ability to both temporarily override the system and permanently opt out.

How could the scheme work?

Heat pumps use electricity instead of gas and are around four times more efficient than the traditional boiler. Customers participating in the programme would receive discounts on their energy bills in exchange for granting their suppliers permission to reduce their electricity consumption via appliances such as heat pumps and electric vehicle charge points during periods of high demand, mainly winter.

“This could include briefly pausing an EV charging session and resuming it later; delaying a heat pump’s operation for a short period; or slightly adjusting thermostat setpoints or water heating schedules,” Mahmoud Shafiee, professor of energy resilience at the University of Surrey, said.

An Octopus Energy spokesperson said: “The reality is that heat pumps, like all other devices, work according to the owner’s preferences. If they choose to opt in to services that slash their energy bills by automating it, that’s the owner’s choice.”

Jan Rosenow, professor of energy and climate policy at the University of Oxford, said for customers with smart heat pumps that are connected to the internet they could be “ramped down” under certain circumstances.

Customers could theoretically say they want their home to be heated to a certain minimum temperature, allowing suppliers to reduce it to that minimum during periods when the grid is under strain.

“The same goes for an electric vehicle charger, where you may say you want your car to be charged by 80 per cent in the morning, but perhaps in the evening hours when there are constraints, automatically your car charger runs down or even pauses, as long as you still get your full charge in the morning.”

Blackout concerns

Fears about the UK’s vulnerability to blackouts have been raised due to the Iran war and closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which sparked a global energy crisis and surge in oil prices.

But during the recent extreme hot weather, the National Energy System Operator (Neso) issued three electricity margin notices, which alerts the market that additional power generation may be required.

It said the unusually high temperatures as well as the availability of wind and gas generation being lower than expected led to tighter electricity margins than normal. Energy demand rises during heatwaves as millions use air conditioning units and fans to cool down, while less power is imported from Europe as countries retain energy for their own needs.

Neso paid £47,288 to consumers to cut their electricity usage by refraining from using certain electrical appliances between 5pm and 11pm on 9 July, the same day it issued an electricity margin notice, the Financial Times reported.

Concerns have been raised that risk of blackouts could increase due to soaring temperatures and greater reliance on renewable energy generation, which is more variable.

However, Shafiee said: “Large-scale blackouts are usually caused by combinations of events rather than insufficient renewable generation alone. Typical causes include simultaneous failures of major generators, transmission network faults, severe weather conditions, cyber threats and unexpected demand spikes.”

Is the scheme designed to reduce the risk of blackouts?

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has stressed it has no concerns about potential blackouts and that the scheme is not designed to mitigate them.

Rosenow said that “data shows very clearly that overall, the quality of supply – which means the number of hours that you have electricity – that has gone up over the last two decades”.

The number of customers affected by a power cut has almost halved since 2010, with households experiencing an interruption in supply on average every three years compared with once every 18 months, according to UK Power Networks, which manages electricity networks across London, the South East and East of England.

Failure to reduce the demand on the grid would currently mean turning to gas plants, Rosenow said.

“Where you have high electricity demand and there’s not enough renewables on the system, and you have to run more gas plants… doing that will increase the cost of electricity, and it will therefore increase the cost of electricity for everybody in the country on the grid.”