The Age of the Energy Nerd has come

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.

Higher power bills are making everyone more aware of their electricity use, and utilities are passing on price signals in the form of cheaper rates when demand is low and pricier rates when demand is high. Utilities are pushing customers to optimise their energy use according to the grid’s needs and around periods of peak demand, while customers are starting to supplement the grid with devices that generate and store electricity at home.

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. The main clash comes at dinner time, which calls for both the electric kettle and the electric oven . He and his wife now think hard about when to charge their EV to take advantage of the free power the panels generate, and monitor other appliances almost as closely.

“Increasingly there has been the ability to offer new services and provide fine levels of control, which is attractive to a lot of people either to improve comfort or because it’s a kind of interesting thing to play with,” Fell says. “It can be quite empowering to people who’ve got the capability to engage with that.”

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 might be programmed to send cheap grid power to a plugged-in EV overnight, for example, or to fill a battery from solar panels once the homeowner drives to work, then release it to the kitchen at dinner time.

Claeys and his wife use four apps to manage everything — one for the car, one for the solar panels, one for the heat pump and one for the electricity meter.The new system will do the work for them: charging the car when the solar panels produce the most power or when energy from the grid is at its cheapest. “We are energy nerds,” Claeys says.

Customers who opt into this kind of variable pricing tend to be wealthier, with the time and patience to tinker with their homes.

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