We're committed to providing a safe, reliable, and affordable electricity supplies while helping our customers move closer to a renewable energy future.
We're continually exploring ways to improve how customers share, access, and store renewable energy. Flexible hot water is one of several services we're investigating to help bring our customers closer to net zero.
More than 140,000 residential and commercial customers currently connect their hot water systems to our distribution network through a controlled load circuit. Over the next two years we will gradually shift these to the new daytime off peak period.
This trial automatically shifted controlled hot water loads for selected customers to the middle of the day when solar energy is abundant. This allowed customers to soak up renewable energy using their hot water system while getting the most value from our controlled load tariff.
The trial leveraged our existing smart meter technologies and controlled load tariff to understand the effects on our customers. This is part of our commitment to provide a safe, reliable, and affordable supply of electricity while helping our customers move closer to a renewable energy future.
The trial ran between January and April 2024. We are currently reviewing the result to inform future services and product offers.