AWARDS FINALIST: Octopus Energy – A smarter energy future

Octopus Energy says its focus on smart technology and time-of-use pricing is reducing costs for its customers and letting them benefit from the growing market for demand-response.

The company says its products prove the effectiveness of price signals in driving behaviour change; its customers typically use 9 per cent less electricity during peak periods and 40 per cent more at night - shaving more than $100 a year from an average household bill.

In the past year, the firm has developed new products to let customers capture more value from the increasing volume of solar entering the market, or at times when the grid is under stress.

Octopus's Zero Bills initiative engages with householders directly on a planned solar and battery investment. Once it's installed, Octopus can help optimise customers' solar, battery storage and smart energy management to offer a five-year guarantee of no electricity bills.

Investment

That not only makes clean energy more accessible, but also helps prospective home builders justify upfront investment in distributed energy solutions at the time of construction, when the investment is most cost-effective.

Another recent initiative is Working on Sunshine. Octopus says that on the Vector, Counties Energy and Marlborough Lines networks, lines charges are low or zero during off-peak daytime hours, and that those low charges coincide with solar abundance, allowing them to offer "significantly lower" rates between 11am and 5pm on weekdays and 7am to 11pm on weekends, passing the benefit on to customers who can shift their demand into those off-peak periods.

Homes with solar and batteries are rewarded with higher rates for shifting exports to peak demand periods.

Saving Sessions is another programme Octopus says can deliver a meaningful impact on the power system and help change the treatment of demand flexibility as a grid resource.

Savings

Customers get advance notice of forecast periods of stress on the grid and are paid $2 per kilowatt-hour for any saving they can make.

Octopus says last winter a fifth of customers participated and on average managed to halve their usage in those periods. If scaled across all New Zealand households, that would provide 244 megawatt-hours of demand reduction, equivalent to taking one of Huntly's Rankine thermal units offline.

Octopus says that by putting smart technology and customer needs at the heart of its operation, it can help Kiwis use electricity more intelligently, save money and support a more sustainable energy system.

The annual Energy Excellence Awards will be held in Wellington on 13 August. The Energy Retailer of the Year award is sponsored by EDMI.