We're paying households up to £250 a year for their hot water
We’re delighted to launch Mixergy Flex Rewards, a new scheme that pays households for helping to balance the electricity grid. The first, and only, ‘tank that pays’ in the UK.
From today, any eligible home with a connected Mixergy tank can earn up to £250 a year*. The rewards are paid in cash to the home’s bill payer and app user, with withdrawals open from November.
What’s changing in the App?
Automatic Schedule has become Mixergy Flex, so a Mixergy tank that was already cutting the cost of hot water now earns on top of what it saves.
All customers with Automatic Schedule can benefit, and simply need to update their App. Any customer can sign up simply by turning on Mixergy Flex in the App.
Why there’s money in moving hot water
Electricity in the UK is priced in half hour blocks, and the price of it swings violently across a single day. When wind and solar output is high and demand is low, there’s more power on the system than the country can use, and the grid operator ends up paying generators to turn down.
On a cold, still evening the opposite happens, and the most expensive plant running sets the price everyone pays. Sitting between those two extremes is a market that pays for demand which can move, and it’s getting bigger every year that more renewable generation comes onto the system.
Why we’re able to pay households
Working with our aggregator partner, we pool the flexibility of thousands of connected Mixergy tanks and sell it into wholesale and grid flexibility markets.
Those markets pay for electricity demand that shows up when the system has power to spare and holds back when it doesn’t, and a share of what each tank earns is passed straight back to the household.
The amount per home will vary. Some may earn nothing one month and more the next. It all depends on the energy markets, the demand for the hot water to flex and the location of the tank. Our own modelling shows some tanks are worth up to £250 a year, with this being an estimate and not a guarantee.
How the tank flexes
A conventional tank doesn’t know how much water it has. Ours knows how much usable hot water is stored in it right now, how much the household normally draws at this hour, and how long it would take to make more.
‘Heat what you need’ is built on exactly that, heating only the portion of the tank the home is going to use and getting through up to 40% less energy than a conventional tank in the process.
We can signal when the system needs demand, the tank works out whether heating then still leaves the household with hot water when they want it, and it either takes the electricity or turns the offer down.
Nothing about the household’s experience changes, with the same hot water at the same temperature at the same times, and the earnings build up quietly in the background.
In social housing, the money goes to the person paying the bill
Flex Rewards are paid to whoever pays the electricity bill at the property, which in social housing means the resident rather than the landlord. For homes where energy costs bite hardest, a tank that already cuts the cost of hot water now adds a second, separate line of income on top.
How to join
Make sure you update your Mixergy app to receive the new Mixergy Flex joining instructions. If you’re on automatic schedule today, nothing changes and it carries on as normal. If you have a manual schedule today, then you simply switch to Mixergy Flex, and the tank will learn your behaviour while earning.
More information is available on our dedicated FAQ page.
*Potential earnings are an estimate, not a guarantee. They are based on our own modelling and will vary depending on your home, your tank’s setup and how you use hot water. Not every home is eligible. Full terms and conditions are on our website.
