- Octopus Energy will team up with a Silicon Valley tech company to make renewable energy cheaper.
- Customers can turn off heating during peak price times, control their energy usage remotely, or charge electric vehicles more cheaply.
Octopus Energy, a UK renewable energy company backed by £7 billion ($8.8 billion) fund Octopus Capital, is set to announce an integration with If This Then That (IFTTT) to enable customers to automatically adjust energy usage based on changes in price.
Based in San Francisco, IFTTT has raised $62.5 million in venture capital funding from investors that include the firm Andreessen Horowitz and Salesforce.
In a release on Thursday, the companies say customers can save hundreds of pounds a year as well as trim personal CO2 footprint by choosing to, for example, turn off heating during peak price times, control their energy usage remotely, or charge electric vehicles more cheaply.
Octopus supplies renewable energy to about 400,000 UK homes – one notable customer is the Premier League soccer club Arsenal.
Renewables’ share of electricity generation in the UK jumped to a record quarterly high of 30.1% in the first three months of the year, compared to 27% at the same time last year, according to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
IFTTT was founded in 2010 and officially launched its service in 2011.
This allows users to automatically turn smart devices or appliances on or off when the price of energy changes or when the price of energy will be below a certain level for a prolonged period of time. Actions can also be triggered when consumption in a day, week or month exceeds a nominated value.
Customers can create “Applets” that connect input “Triggers” to output “Actions.” Consumption can be altered based on energy price change, energy price threshold change over a duration and total consumption over a certain period of time.
Users can automatically turn smart devices or appliances on or off when the price of energy changes or energy prices are set to be below a certain level for a period of time. Actions can also be triggered when consumption in a day, week or month exceeds a nominated value.
“This kind of technology advance is crucial to adopting the smart grid needed for a renewable future,” said Greg Jackson, CEO Octopus Energy.
Source: businessinsider.in
