00:00 We know energy bills are a really significant concern for people. We've been looking into
00:05 ways that households could save money on their energy bill in the future, both in 2025 and
00:12 2030 and out to 2040 as well. The main findings of our research are really that households
00:17 can save money by using electricity much more flexibly, and we can save carbon as well.
00:23 So on a national basis, if we look at 2040, we'd be saving up to £14 billion. On an individual
00:31 basis there are really good savings as well, so up to about £375 in 2040 if you were a
00:38 consumer that had lots of those low carbon technologies installed.
00:43 British households could save billions by switching to flexible electricity initiatives.
00:48 That's according to findings in a new report by Anna Moss, senior consultant at Cornwall
00:52 Insight. She found solutions like time of use tariffs, smart meters, solar PV and batteries
00:58 could mean savings of around £4.6 billion by 2030 and an astounding £14.1 billion by
01:05 2040. But what exactly do we mean by flexible energy initiatives?
01:10 Flexible energy use, we mean increasing, decreasing or changing your consumption to a different
01:15 time of day. So that might be by taking direct action by things like changing when you're
01:21 doing your washing for instance, or changing when you charge your electric vehicle. We're
01:26 talking about making changes that you can make easily without changing things like the
01:32 temperature of your house or making things less convenient for you. And in the future
01:36 we'd expect lots of those changes to become much easier to do, much more automated. It
01:41 might be things like just clicking a button when you're signing up to your energy tariff
01:45 for instance.
01:46 At the moment, the demand for electricity peaks usually between 4 and 7pm during the
01:51 week. To meet this surge in demand, additional fossil fuel generated electricity is often
01:56 required, which drives up wholesale electricity costs and thus impacts consumer bills. With
02:01 the expected surge in electricity demand in the coming years, the importance of transitioning
02:05 to flexible electricity solutions has become even more pronounced according to experts
02:10 like Anna.
02:11 Your in-home display will show you how much electricity and gas you're using in a kind
02:16 of live view. So if you're making changes you should see that change there. And that
02:21 smart meter will also give you access to things like a time of use tariff or a demand flexibility
02:26 service that will give you the rewards for making those changes. Because it means the
02:31 supplier can see when you're using electricity and when you've made that change.
02:36 And an added bonus to the measures being better for our wallets, they're also better for the
02:40 planet too.
02:41 If we look at the kind of savings in 2040 that we've modelled, just by changing the
02:46 way we're using electricity in homes, we think we could save the equivalent of 630,000 trees
02:52 being planted. So there are good carbon savings there. You'd also reduce the need to build
02:58 around four additional power stations to meet that peak in demand that would happen from
03:02 the additional electricity usage.
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