An energy supplier will use customers’ smart meter data to set a personalised peak time when they pay most for their energy bills, This Is Money can reveal.
In a first for the industry, supplier So Energy will launch the first personalised tariff, using smart meter data over the last 12 months to create individual pricing rates for households.
The So Unique tariff will track consumption patterns to create three pricing tiers: peak, off-peak and super off-peak, based on customers’ energy habits.
The idea is that customers who want to save money will shift their high-energy tasks, like doing the laundry, to their own off-peak and super off-peak windows when they are charged less.
The supplier, which launched in 2015 and has 300,000 customers, expects customers to save up to £150 per year compared to standard variable tariffs governed by the energy price cap, without changing their consumption habits.
By shifting 20 per cent of energy use to personal off-peak and super off-peak times, customers it claims they can save up to £200 a year.
Flexibility: So Energy launches new tariff to relieve pressure on the grid and save customers cash, if they are willing to use energy at times they usually don’t
Energy suppliers are increasingly encouraging households to shift their usage away from the peak hours of 4pm and 7pm, in a bid to balance the National Grid.
This helps prevent blackouts when electricity demand exceeds supply.
A report published last week found that the risk of blackouts is at its lowest since 2019-20, but that there could be ‘some tight days’.
Plenty of suppliers already offer customers cheaper energy if they shift power usage outside of the standard peak hours.
Customers who sign up for British Gas’s PeakSave scheme get half-price electricity between 11am and 4pm on Sundays, while Octopus Energy also pays customers to use less power at peak times.
Some tariffs also track the wholesale energy market, allowing households to avoid using energy during times when prices are much higher.
So Energy’s new tariff is a similar concept, but the time bands and rates will vary from customer to customer. The company says it wants to move away from a ‘one-size-fits-all approach to energy pricing’.
For example, a household of nine-to-five workers and school-aged children who are out during the day is likely to have very different peak times from a household of shift workers.
Households are grappling with another rise in their energy bills this winter, with millions paying more than necessary if they’re on a standard variable tariff.
There are also growing calls to scrap the energy price cap.
So Energy’s head of trading previously told This Is Money that the price cap was stifling innovation, with customers not bothering to move off a variable tariff.
Co-founder Charlie Davies said: ‘At So Energy, we appreciate that everyone is different and has their own ways of using energy – and that’s a good thing.
‘This is the first truly personalised energy tariff available to UK consumers, and it’s designed to be fairer, smarter and more aligned with how people actually live.’