Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | APRIL 2023 | 13 Electricity continued overleaf iffs but meanwhile if you're talking about mass EV adoption, or even mass market flexibility from whatever sources, you have to make that as simple and accessible as possible and it's why we've been putting a lot of effort into developing the Intelligent Octopus tariff… "Customers plug in, integrate the EV, tell us when they need the car charged by and when they need it. All of the optimisation and price sensitivity stuff happens in the background and means we can offer a super low-cost tariff to customers for that portion of their demand." Valts Grintals, from Kaluza, takes an even firmer position that what it and its parent company Ovo refers to as "type-of-use" tar- iffs will win out over time-of-use tariffs. As with Intelligent Octopus, customers on Ovo's Drive Anytime tariff must give the sup- plier control over the exact charging sched- ule to access a lower rate, although they are also able to charge their car during the day. "We're trying to move past time-of-use rates," Grintals explains. "We've seen that with dynamic time-of-use rates, there's too much labour involved for the end consumer to deal with. Nobody wants to check tomor- row's price every day. "And then the static time-of-use tariffs usually don't reflect the full value and there's a trade-off you need to make, which is, yes, my EV charging is cheaper but my household electricity bill may be higher and it depends on your household load profile. "That's what we are really focusing on – automated demand response and how do you leverage that to make propositions sim- pler for customers." Market access As well as the adoption of low-carbon tech- nologies, the proliferation of smart tariffs is also dependent on suppliers' access to energy markets that can realise the full value of their flexibility. At the moment, Grintals says, it is really only the wholesale market where suppliers can do this without "huge barriers" because all that is really required is for customers to have a smart meter. As well as reducing con- sumption during periods where prices are high, domestic flexibility can enable them to refine their trading positions and avoid expensive imbalance charges. "Up until 2025, that is where most of the value is going to come in," he adds. Schoch says avoiding high wholesale electricity prices driven by fuel costs for gas generators has been particularly important during the energy crisis. But as commodity Despite half of UK households now having smart meters, relatively few are on smart tariffs

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