When Kevin Wood’s local utility started offering customers money in exchange for using less electricity, the father of one had a battle on his hands. Wood, who lives in Hampshire in southern England, was keen on realizing savings while alleviating peak energy demand. But some things — like teenagers — are even harder to manage than maxed-out electricity grids.
“The decisions and actions that people take as consumers have more impact on the energy system,” says Marie Claire Brisbois, a senior lecturer in energy policy at the University of Sussex. Technical know-how isn’t required; neither is much math. For Chris Morgan, 35, a church operations manager in Durham in the north of England, three is the magic number — 3 kilowatts. That’s how much his home battery can discharge at any one time, so Morgan’s family of four tries to keep their energy consumption under that cap. They use the grid to charge the battery and their EV between 12:30 a.m. and 4:30 a.m., when electricity is cheap.
“You can always see the exact electricity consumption that you have at the moment,” Wehr says. “This leads to thoughts where you say, ‘Man, how should we go about using the dishwasher?’ You can suddenly see how much the kettle uses. It totally blows me away when you turn it on.” Indeed, a big part of being an energy nerd is influencing others. Tom Bray, 35, started tracking his home energy usage after having a heat pump installed in 2021. It produces a COP of 3.4, which he’s happy with. It means he’s paying roughly the same as someone with a gas boiler, and his 19th-century home isn’t the easiest to heat.
Sarah Chambers, a 52-year-old mother of three from south Wales, realised that her family could save a “substantial amount of money” by investing in a car charger, solar panels and a battery. Her next project is to set up a home assistant computer to automate the household energy flow. Chambers also opted into a pricing plan with her utility, Octopus Energy, that automatically sends power to her EV when prices are low.
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