Where does electricity come from? And how to get it cheaper.
The electricity that comes out of your home sockets is just electricity. It's the same every hour, every day. In the UK this is an alternating current at a frequency of 50 hertz and a voltage of 230 volts.
The ultimate destiny of those electrons is to provide power for your oven or fridge, to light up your home or to charge your phone.
That electricity arrives at your house via a national grid of overground and underground wires from all over the country - and beyond. But where that electricity starts its journey varies enormously.
Humans have come up with many ingenious ways of turning natural forms of latent energy into usable electricity. We’ve learnt how to generate electricity by burning coal and gas, by harnessing the wind, sun or sea, and even by splitting atomic nuclei.
All those methods have pros and cons and, as we know, some of them are significantly better for our planet than others.
The energy mix
Countries all over the world have very different balances of energy generation infrastructure - their energy mix.
In addition to fossil fuels being used directly, to cook with for example, fossil fuels are also still the most prevalent way of generating electricity globally.¹
In the UK we still use a lot of oil and gas directly, but when it comes to generating electricity, we’re doing much better. Low-carbon electricity generation is now the majority.
Coal has almost completely disappeared from our electricity generation energy mix - plummeting in just the last decade.
When is green?
This kind of published energy mix data shows an average over time. In reality, the energy mix is changing by the minute — both in response to changes in demand and as a result of natural variations in things like wind and sunshine.
So we can say that UK electricity these days is generally more green than not, but sometimes it’s much greener than other times. With the right conditions we can even have short periods of time when the UK’s electricity supply is 100% carbon-free.
This variability, and the abundance of green energy, is why some energy companies suggest ‘green hours’ or ‘green days’ to help you use more renewable energy when it’s available. The National Energy System Operator for Great Britain has even created an app that tells you what the current mix is and when to charge devices and plug things in to take advantage of a favourable energy mix.
So what?
Knowing that the carbon intensity of electricity varies, and when the ‘greenest’ times are, is all very well but what can you do with this information?
Sometimes you might be in a position to charge your phone or a power bank at a moment’s notice, but usually there’s not much you can practically do to take advantage of abundant green energy whenever it happens to be available.
This is particularly true because the greenest times to use electricity are often in the middle of the night. Armed with more data, are you going to set an alarm for 3am to get up and batch-cook some food?
Automate it - Windfall it
But what if you could automate it all?
This is exactly the point of Windfall Energy. We are developing products that do all the thinking for you.
Windfall Plug
Our first product is a plug adapter. A Windfall Plug automatically knows the best times to turn on every day. So you can plug it in and know that you'll always get the greenest electricity available.
Anything with a battery can be plugged into a Windfall Plug and the plug will only charge your devices at the optimum times. For example, you could use it for cordless vacuum cleaners, laptops/tablets/phones, or power tools.
Some mains-powered appliances can also be run in the middle of the night to take advantage of greener electricity whenever it’s available - things like dehumidifiers or heated clothes airers.
Windfall Battery
Our next product is going to be a battery. A Windfall Battery uses the same intelligence as the plug, but instead of just being able to turn things on and off, it fills up with electricity at the optimum times and then puts it back into your home when it's needed.
The battery couldn’t be simpler - it just plugs directly into a regular power socket in your home and charges up when electricity is greenest and discharges when your home needs it most.
Be a part of it
Not only do Windfall products make your home less carbon intensive, in the UK green energy is very often the cheapest energy, so you can save money too.
We’re currently offering beta versions of our plugs for people in the UK to try out, so if that sounds interesting please get in touch.
And if you want to be first to hear when the plugs are more widely available, make sure you’re signed up to our newsletter.
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