A recent BBC report has highlighted how during the Coronavirus pandemic the National Grid were virtually giving electricity away. With demand down 15% across Europe, and with lots of sunshine and wind generating plenty of renewable energy, electricity prices went negative 66 times during April.
“Consumers who had signed up to flexible, real time tariffs with one UK energy supplier found themselves encouraged to use electricity when it went negative. ” according to the BBC.
“You’re doing a service to the National Grid,” says Greg Jackson from Octopus Energy, the company who encouraged their customers to use more during negative pricing episodes.
“The grid is going to pay someone to deal with this problem of oversupply. They will pay a company to build batteries, or they will pay companies to stop generating or you can pay customers to use electricity at those times.”
“These are all different ways of providing the service of balancing the grid.”
With the growth of powerful batteries consumers, both domestic and industrial, can buy electricity when prices are low and store it for later use.
Reading based Carter Electrical have just become an approved installer of Tesla Powerwall 2 batteries. Tesla have over 100,000 of their batteries installed in UK and are set to become the leading supplier. Powerwall is a completely automated system that installs easily and requires minimal maintenance.
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