CrowdFlex

CrowdFlex is a NESO led innovation project, funded by Ofgem’s Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF), that explored the potential of domestic flexibility as a reliable energy and grid management resource, by identifying the technology capability, understanding the statistical nature of flexibility, learning about consumer behaviour, and aligning NESO and DSO requirements.

In the beta phase of the project customers took part in three sets of large-scale randomised control consumer trials (summer 24, winter 24/25 and summer 25) with two kinds of flexibility services:

• Utilisation service: 107,000 OVO customers were paid to turn up or turn down their energy use at certain times
• Availability service: 33,000 customers from across OVO and Ohme EV were paid to make their assets available to the grid e.g. to plug in their electric vehicles 

The trials tested a range of event parameters such as payment levels, consistency bonuses, incentive structures, notice periods, messaging and motivations, such as the offer of free electricity at selected times.

The data gathered from the trials, and the state-of-the-art demand and consumer flexibility prediction models developed, will offer the potential for real-time data-driven decision making for grid operations.

Customer surveys were also an important element of the project, with over 37,000 customers responding to surveys over the duration of the beta phase. This provided valuable insight on customers’ experiences taking part in CrowdFlex trials.

The trials and survey results produced some valuable learnings: 

• In both availability and utilisation trials, turn-up events generated a stronger response compared to turn-down events. 
• 64% of survey respondents taking part in the availability trials plugged their EV in more during the trial than they did before. 
• The final survey results suggest that manual flexibility remains the norm, with 80% of utilisation trial participants saying that they used manual shifting. However, automation helped utilisation trial participants shift on average 30% more electricity, suggesting that automation presents an opportunity to support and enhance participation. 
• Habit formation increased in motivation over time to 39% of respondents in the final utilisation trial surveys, up from 22% in the first survey. 73% of the availability trial respondents also said that the trials had become part of their regular habits. 
• The strongest motivation for participation amongst utilisation survey respondents continues to be the opportunity to save money (69%), then contributing to a greener grid (46%) and being interested in the challenge (46%). 
• Customers were price-sensitive, delivering more response when presented with more generous rewards in the utilisation trials. There was a trade-off between maximising response volume and minimising cost per kWh of flexibility response, with lower incentives being more cost-effective per kWh of flex. 
• For the availability trials, escalating payments were generally more effective and cost-efficient than flat payments (in terms of £ spent per kWh flexibility delivered).

The models developed during CrowdFlex and the insights gathered could deliver multiple benefits, such as:

• Lowering customer bills
• Reducing the costs of grid balancing and network reinforcement
• Enabling greater market participation on the demand side
• Increasing the use of renewable generation and lowering carbon emissions

CrowdFlex was delivered by NESO with a consortium of partners from across the energy sector: OVO Energy, Ohme EV, Centre for Net Zero, ERM, Amazon Web Services (AWS), National Grid Electricity Distribution, Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks. NESO was also supported by Smart Grid Consultancy Ltd, CGI, The Smith Institute and Centre for Sustainable Energy.