Beta Testing - What We Discovered
The Vision
At Windfall Energy, we're developing energy products that help urban residents automatically use electricity when it's most renewable and cheapest. Our focus is simple: help customers use more renewable energy while reducing their energy bills, without requiring any permanent home modifications.
We're starting with two complementary products:
The Windfall Plug controls when your devices use energy, scheduling their operation during what we call "Windfall Hours" - typically in the middle of the night when renewable generation is highest. It's perfect for devices that can be used flexibly: e-bikes, chargers, dehumidifiers, heated clothes airers and more. The plug gets data from your energy supplier to optimise both cost and environmental impact.
The Windfall Battery addresses fixed-time energy needs. Think cooking dinner - you can't always shift when you need to use your hob or oven. The battery stores renewable energy during Windfall Hours and makes it available when you need it.
While these products work brilliantly together, they're designed to function independently. Many devices already contain batteries, so it's more efficient to control their charging directly with the Windfall Plug rather than adding an extra battery to their charging path.
Our strategy is to launch the Windfall Plug first. It's quicker to develop and allows us to gather valuable customer insights that will inform our battery design.
What We're Testing
Our first round of testing focuses on three fundamental questions:
Value Communication: Can we effectively explain the concept of energy flexibility to potential customers? We need to help people understand how shifting their energy use to Windfall Hours benefits them and increases renewable energy use.
Customer Motivation: What drives people to change their energy habits?
Is using more renewable energy alone a sufficient motivator?
How important are cost savings in the decision-making process?
Do people understand and value the connection between variable energy pricing and renewable energy?
Use Cases: Which devices make the Windfall Plug truly valuable?
Are people willing to be flexible with when they use certain appliances?
Which use cases deliver meaningful impact - financially and environmentally?
Do people already own suitable devices?
What We're Not Testing (Yet)
We've deliberately excluded some areas from our initial testing to maintain focus:
Hardware manufacturing and safety compliance - we’ll use existing hardware
Mobile app development - we're using a web app for speed
E-commerce and fulfilment processes - we’ll do this manually for now
Pricing and payment processing - this is a future test
These aspects are crucial for our final product, but right now we're laser-focused on validating our core assumptions about customer behaviour and value proposition.
MVP Hardware
To test our assumptions quickly and efficiently, we took a pragmatic engineering approach. Rather than developing custom hardware from scratch, we adapted an existing product and built our intelligence around it.
Our beta product combines proven hardware with open-source firmware, connected to our custom backend server where the grid integration and scheduling magic happens. By centralising the core intelligence in our server, we can rapidly adjust and improve how the product works based on customer feedback, without needing to update the hardware or firmware in people's homes.
This approach lets us focus on what matters most right now: learning how customers interact with the product and validating our core assumptions about energy flexibility. While this implementation isn't ideal for a final product, it gives us the speed and flexibility we need at this stage of development.
Our Learning
Discovering the Right Use Cases
When we started, we assumed mobility devices like e-bikes and e-scooters would be our primary use cases. Reality proved different. Our research revealed that heated clothes airers and dehumidifiers are not only more commonly owned, but also offer the best opportunity for impact. These appliances use significant energy and can operate flexibly - perfect for optimising to Windfall Hours.
Customer Delight in Clean Energy
We discovered an unexpected source of satisfaction among our users. As one customer shared:
"My phone doesn't charge when I go to sleep, and it is magically full when I wake up."
This simple feedback revealed that there's genuine satisfaction in knowing your devices are automatically using the cleanest energy available.
Hardware Lessons
Our beta testing revealed crucial insights about physical design. The form factor of our initial hardware created unexpected challenges with UK socket compatibility.
The beta Windfall Plug’s dimensions are not compatible with all UK wall sockets
Improving the Setup Experience
Early user testing highlighted a critical moment in the customer journey: the initial setup. Users wanted immediate feedback that their device was working correctly, but our original architecture introduced delays of several minutes between app commands and plug responses. This created uncertainty and eroded trust.
We responded by re-architecting our system to provide instant feedback when users test different modes (On/Off/Windfall). This simple change significantly improved user confidence in the product, especially during those crucial first moments of use.
What's Next
Our initial testing has given us clear direction for our next phase of development. We're focusing on three key areas:
Targeted Testing
With strong use cases identified around dehumidifiers and heated clothes airers, we're now running focused tests to understand how to best reach and serve these specific customer groups. These appliances represent our best opportunity to deliver meaningful impact in both carbon reduction and energy cost savings.
Value and Pricing
Having validated the core value proposition, we're ready to test pricing. We deliberately separated proving value from pricing discussions in our initial phase. Now we can explore what customers are willing to pay for the demonstrated benefits.
Continuous Improvement
We're maintaining our rapid iteration approach, continuously improving the product based on user feedback. You can follow our progress in our development log, where we document all updates to the app and firmware.
Want to help with testing?
If you’d like to be part of our product testing and help shape the Windfall Energy, please feel free to get in touch, or to follow our progress and hear about our next developments you can sign up to our mailing list below.
