Implications and access to benefits of flexibility

This project investigates how to make demand-side energy flexibility more accessible to all households. As the UK moves towards Net Zero, the ability to shift when electricity is used could help reduce bills. However, not everyone can easily participate in or benefit from flexibility schemes. Some households face barriers such as being unable to install key technologies like heat pumps or batteries, while others may need to make difficult compromises in their daily routines to participate. The project examines how to widen access to flexibility benefits while ensuring the transition remains fair and inclusive. 

• Identify what approaches work best for broadening access to demand-side flexibility benefits across different household contexts 

• Understand how flexibility provision impacts energy service quality, costs, and daily life for different households 

• Examine how household characteristics (e.g., tenure status, income, schedules) affect ability to participate in flexibility schemes 

• Develop recommendations for making flexibility programs more inclusive

The first stage of this project is being conducted through a secondment at the innovation charity Nesta, as part of its A Sustainable Future mission. This has involved working with them to develop an area of focus on inclusion in clean heat, and conducting an interview-based project to understand prepayment meter customers’ experience of flexibility.  

The second stage envisages using forms of participatory modelling to explore how people view trade-offs between energy cost and service quality. This means that people taking part in the research will be directly involved in how their inputs are included in computer models. The modelling will explore how these trade-offs vary with contextual factors such as household characteristics, and what this means for households and the energy system.

Findings are already available from the Nesta study of customer experiences of prepayment meter customers using Utilita’s ‘Power Payback’ Demand Flexibility. We found participants valued even small financial savings, and the educational benefits from reducing electricity use. Caring responsibilities significantly impacted ability to take part, with households with children struggling to change schedules but potentially saving more when able to adjust consumption. While participants showed limited understanding of the purpose of the flexibility, they generally didn’t view differing benefits across household types as unfair. Key recommendations include increasing awareness of flexibility needs, finding ways of improving response reliability, and developing more inclusive business models. 

Future work explore how people view trade-offs between energy cost and service quality, and what this could mean for households and the energy system.