E.ON Next calls for a new battery powered era to cut energy bills

A national rollout of home batteries is key to cutting energy bills in the short term, according to a new report.

The Home Age, published by E.ON Next, analyses the results of the company’s first of a kind battery pilot in partnership with Coventry City Council. Homes in the city were given upgrades including batteries, solar panels, insulation, and energy efficient white goods, as well as being placed on a time of use (ToU) tariff to incentivise energy usage when there is less demand on the grid.

The results of The Home Age study highlight the financial savings for Brits who have batteries installed and switch to a ToU tariff. On average, each participating household in the E.ON Next Coventry pilot is saving approximately £255 a year on their energy bills due to batteries alone. For larger families, whose energy needs are typically twice those of the average household, bills reduce by around £415 a year.

Potential savings for households with medical dependencies, such as kidney dialysis machines, are even higher. One such family participating in the Coventry pilot has seen their energy bills fall by the equivalent of £600 a year.

On the back of these figures, E.ON Next has issued a call for government to support the installation of batteries in 250,000 homes where residents are in fuel poverty. The Home Age report highlights that government investment of £600 million would support lower income families by ‘reducing their bills, helping them to heat their homes more affordably and protecting them from price volatility’.

Ramona Vlasiu, chief operating officer for E.ON Next, commented: ‘The cost of energy in the UK is too high and as winter approaches, millions of households, especially the most vulnerable, will be anxious about their bills in the months to come.

‘Financial support packages such as the Winter Fuel Payment have a role to play in tackling the issue, but we believe the way to solve it long term is to put people at the heart of the energy transition. That means upgrading their homes with new technology, such as batteries, and putting them in control of the energy they use. Doing so will not only lower energy bills in the short term, but also create a national energy system with a long lasting positive impact by reducing fuel poverty, creating jobs and boosting the economy.’

As part of The Home Age report, E.ON Next worked with Development Economics to calculate the benefits of a nationwide programme to rollout batteries and ToU tariffs.

Based on the savings from the Coventry pilot, it estimates:

• If every household in the UK in fuel poverty received the upgrades, bills for these people would fall by £753 million a year, cumulatively.

• Batteries and ToU tariffs in every UK home, excluding flats, would see total energy bill savings of approximately £5.45 billion a year, and the nation’s energy use drop by 3174 GWh per year (roughly equivalent to the annual power consumption of all homes in Greater London combined).

• For each £1 million saved through energy cost reductions across the country, the nation’s finances would benefit from an estimated £186,000 in gross value added (GVA) and nine new jobs would be created.

Support from the general public would also be high. An E.ON Next poll of more than 2000 consumers revealed that more than nine in 10 (93%) UK adults want to improve their home energy efficiency and over four in five (83%) think the government should do more to upgrade the energy efficiency of homes.