The PowerShaper service will pay members for helping to run the electricity grid by turning their electrical appliances on / off automatically.
What is PowerShaper Flex?
Grid operators are responsible for ensuring the good operation of the electricity grid and sometimes they need help to do this. They sometimes pay third-parties, called aggregators, to help them. In the past these third-parties would run standby generators or get large consumers to turn off. As electric vehicles, heat pumps, and batteries become more common in our homes there is an increasing opportunity for these new technologies to play a role in helping to operate the grid. PowerShaper is a service which will allow homes and small businesses to contribute to grid operations by responding to requests to turn on/off appliances at specific times in specific locations.
How does it work?
Carbon Co-op technicians will visit your home and install equipment which will enable certain existing electrical appliances (such as electric vehicle chargers, heat pumps, immersion water heaters, battery storage) to be turned on/off remotely.
We turn things on/off only when we receive a request from grid operators and other parties. They will pay us if we can prove to them that we turned things on/off in the right places at the right times.
We use the data from the smart meter installed by your electricity supplier to prove this to them (but only the small amount of data at the time they asked us to turn things on/off). We fetch this data automatically from the national smart metering system. You don’t need to provide any bills or other readings.
Once we have used the data to work out what happened we pay you based on your participation. We take a small cut of the payment from the grid operator which we use to run our service and organisation and you keep the rest.
A few things to note
- All installation and equipment is provided for free.
- We do not bother you with phone calls, text messages, or apps asking you to do things yourself, it is all completely automated.
- But if you want we will let you know when something is happening and you will always have the option to say no and opt-out!
- You do not need to change supplier and there will be no interruption of your electricity supply after we have installed the equipment.
- Only appliances that you choose to be enrolled in the service will be controlled – we will never be turning your TV or washing machine on or off!
What next?
If this sounds interesting please email us at powershaper@carbon.coop and we will let you know when we are ready to roll out the service in your area.
You may also be interested in our smart meter data service available now to all Carbon Co-op members for free at app.powershaper.io or for just £12 a year for non members at powershaper.io.