This section focuses on what participants did to respond to Power Payback events, and what they thought about taking part in the service in general.

Responding to events – a range of actions

Interviewees undertook a wide range of types and extent of action to try and reduce their consumption. Actions taken were strongly influenced by household make-up, including the presence of children. Households with children were often on quite inflexible schedules based around school runs and bedtime. Lone occupants, on the other hand, were not constrained by the schedules and preferences of co-occupants. As Jane, who lives alone commented, “I know for some people maybe [events] might be across tea time, but I tend to eat a bit later”.

The most common actions across all household types were turning off TVs, computers and making sure that plug sockets were turned off. Often this included watching programmes or playing games on phones or tablets instead. Some participants also described how they moved the time of their usual evening activities, such as cooking and washing, in an attempt to shift their consumption, although shifting cooking was harder when younger children were present. It was common in our sample for someone in the household (usually the interviewee) to often be at home during the day, meaning doing activities like laundry at non-peak times was possible.

Despite only being able to reduce their electricity use in a small proportion of events, Erica’s household was among the highest savers overall (at £7.48). This was because it typically has higher electricity consumption, meaning that savings (when they did come) could be larger.

Some participants described how they had adopted new methods of control to try and make turning off their devices easier. This included the use of timers for thermostats as well as remote controls that enabled the turning off of lights without having to go to each room individually. For example, Kaye found that purchasing a voice-activated timer for the heating of their lizard tanks allowed them to better regulate their energy use, as “the heat is off a couple of times a day for an hour or so, and the tanks still hold the heat”.

The most extreme action that a participant took was turning their fuse box off so that they could completely remove all consumption from their property. To mitigate this loss of power, Damon would download films and TV programmes to watch on his laptop during events.

Because he lived alone, he could take this action without the risk of affecting other occupants. However, it also meant that his electricity use was generally low, meaning that his overall savings per event were the lowest of all the participants (at an average of £0.19 per event).

No-one mentioned using low-carbon technologies such as solar panels, heat pumps, domestic batteries, and electric vehicles differently to respond to Power Payback, even where (rarely) some of these were present. However, one participant with solar panels had previously changed to run their electric water heater over the middle of the day, so as to benefit from lower-cost power at this time.

In our forum analysis, discussion of responses using low-carbon technologies was infrequent but still more common. For example, people discussed how they hoped to use home batteries to export electricity and earn greater rewards.

Power Payback was popular – despite often small savings

Amongst our participants, there was generally a positive attitude towards Power Payback – although it is possible that less satisfied customers would have been less inclined to participate in this research. Interviewees mentioned that they found the events “fun” and “easy” to take part in. They appreciated the opportunity to save on their electricity bill whilst taking part in an activity that they considered as benefiting the environment. Relatively low rewards from each event were noted and a participant mentioned that it would have been nice to have saved a little more. Despite this remark, the magnitude of savings did not appear to cause any dissatisfaction or reluctance to participate in future events – again, the prevailing view was reflected by Jane, who observed that, “I know it's not a huge amount, but any little amount still helps really, doesn't it?”

Our MSE forum analysis suggests that dissatisfaction with the level of the incentive was common amongst forum posters. Almost half the times it was mentioned, it was in a negative context, compared with just over 10% being positive.

Households with children tended to appreciate the opportunity Power Payback provided to gamify energy. This took the form of participants getting their children to actively go around the home to try and find appliances or plug sockets that could be turned off. Sometimes parents even used the incentive payment to encourage their children, as in this example from Kaye:

There were also some limited reports of conflict and disagreement with children. As Gwen commented, “My son wasn’t impressed when I told him he couldn't have his computer and his Xbox on, but he managed”. The fact that events tended to happen at a similar time of day (early evening) was a frustration for some participants, especially when children were present. There was a sense that this is when the most important things are happening, not just for them but for many households. For example, Erica explained that “the most recent ones I found was all kind of at the same time period, which is really peak time. I think not just for us as a family, but for a lot of families”. Participants didn’t generally draw an explicit causal link between this kind of observation and the underlying reason for the timing of Power Payback events (managing peaks).

For households without children present, beyond financial and energy saving benefits, participants appreciated the opportunity to disconnect and do something different. As Jane observed, “it was actually quite nice in a way to turn everything off for a bit and just sit and chill out”.

There were mixed views on the quality of feedback received after events. Following an event, Utilita would send messages to customers with different wording depending on whether they saved energy or not. If they saved, the SMS read as follows: “Congrats! You’ve earned £[AMOUNT] by Power Payback! We’ve credited your electricity meter. Check out Utilita Community to see how we calculate your payment [URL].” If they didn’t save, the message read: “Thanks for taking part in Power Payback – unfortunately you didn’t manage to reduce your electricity usage enough to earn energy credit. Head to [URL] for some handy tips to reduce your energy for next time.” A confirmation SMS was also sent when credit was transferred to the meter. Some participants found the savings confirmation messages clear, while others highlighted some possible sources of confusion, relating to both information source and timing. For example, delays between the event and receiving feedback meant that participants weren’t always sure which event the feedback related to.

Our MSE forum analysis revealed that, behind only the size of the reward, most negative comments were directed towards apps/notifications, and smart meter data. The latter appears to reflect issues around customers not being able to participate due to smart meter data access problems – an issue that was not reported by any of our participants.

Having considered participants’ reflections on taking part in Power Payback, the next section turns to explore how flexibility services – both DFS and more broadly – might be evolved and taken up in the future.