Utility Week

28 | MAY 2023 | UTILITY WEEK Electricity Analysis Demand Flexibility Service was vulberable to 'gaming' Utility Week has uncovered evidence that some people exploited loopholes to game National Grid's Demand Flexibility Service, serving as a warning to future demand-response initiatives. C onsumers have been gaming National Grid's Demand Flexibility Service by deliberately increasing their electric- ity usage in the hours leading up to stress events, Utility Week has discovered. Our investigation into claims made on internet forums found multiple examples of customers deliberately in• ating their con- sumption before one of the test events. One Reddit poster claimed to be able to generate a pro- t of £175 per session, spending £45 on electricity but receiving £220 in • exibility payments. The Demand Flexibility Service was introduced last year as one of a series of contingency measures to help National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO) manage demand peaks over winter in the midst of the global gas crisis brought on by Russia's inva- sion of Ukraine. These peaks generally come during week- day evenings. According to the guidance document for the service, the baseline for a weekday event is determined by - rst calcu- lating consumers' average usage during the same period on the previous 10 weekdays, excluding days on which there was another event. An in-day adjustment is then applied to this volume based on consumption during the three hours prior to the beginning of an event. Participating consumers found they could massively increase the payments they received from just a few pounds to tens, and in one case hundreds, per session by raising their consumption during this in-day adjust- ment period. In a thread on the Octopus Energy sub- reddit explaining how to make money from the supplier's Saving Sessions, one user claimed this method had enabled them to earn a pro- t of £175 per session: "To make some real money, what you need to do is use as much energy as possible during the in-day adjustment period, so if the session is 5-6pm, during 1-4pm you use whatever you can. It weighs on the formula heavily. "I am now managing nearly 175,000 points per session, £220. This far outweighs my electric cost of around £45 per session." The user said they were paying a unit rate for electricity of 41p/kWh. When another Reddit poster questioned how they were able to rack up a bill of £45 – equating to almost 110kWh of electricity – the user said this was "easy" as they had a triple phase power supply, two electric vehi- cles, a battery storage system, an air-source heat pump, an immersion heater and under- • oor heating. One prominent user on Octopus Energy's own forum coined the term "power rinse" to describe the phenomenon, with the termi- nology becoming common parlance among posters. They said they had been able to use 30kWh of electricity during the in-day adjustment (IDA) period, stating: "Easily done: EV:7.4kW; immersion heater: 2.8kW; A2A ASHP: 1-2kW; DC coupled battery: 3.2kW; oven clean: 2kW. Soon adds up to allow a Power Rinse TM." Although these big numbers appear to be exceptional cases, numerous users on the Octopus Energy website said they had been able to boost their earnings from just a few pounds, if any, to well into the double dig- its. Many more posted screenshots from the Octopus phone app showing the number of OctoPoints they had earned over recent sessions. One such user, following the advice of

• Cover