This weekend will see the official start of British Summer Time (BST), as clocks will spring forward one hour on Sunday 29 March 2020. How can IoT controls help you adapt to the clock change?
The clock change accelerates the seasonal trends towards lower demand during the warmer, lighter summer months.
Historically, the scale of peak power reduction following the clock change has been around 10%. However, early forecasts show an expected 5% drop in average demand for the week following the change. An unseasonably mild winter has kept demand levels depressed in general this year.
The advent of demand management and significant developments in energy efficiency and IoT controls have made the UK consumer more proactive when it comes to when and how they use electricity. It can be seen in the graph that overall demand, before and after the clock change, is trending downwards.
The role of renewables
The increase in wind and solar capacity in recent years has contributed to the overall demand reductions. Higher volumes of on-site renewable capacity allow more generation to be provided off-grid as homes and businesses generate their own electricity supply during windy or sunny spells. This reduces demand on the national transmission system. The high levels of solar availability during the summer season were a particularly strong influence on demand levels this year as on-site solar panels increased embedded generation, reducing demand requirements for the transmission network.
Renewables continue to deliver a growing percentage of the UK electricity mix. The 2019 share for wind, solar, hydro and bioenergy electricity sources was 31.8%, up from 27.5% in 2018.
How clock change impacts behaviour
The graph above shows how the peak demand changes before and after the clock change. The earlier evenings cause an increase in electricity demand as consumers use more sources of light and heat. Post-change, a longer day-time means that less lighting is used through the day and also has the effect of pushing daily peak demand to later in the evening.
The graph shows that over the last five years before the clock change, peak demand occurs at around 6.30pm in the weeks leading up. However, once the hour is gained peak demand occurs later in the day, at around 8.00pm on average.
The impact of coronavirus
As the COVID-19 situation has developed it has become increasingly clear that there will be an impact to demand levels. The graph below shows the effect of the temporary closure of schools and some businesses, with peak demand forecast to fall around 1GW on average week-on-week. The combination of the further closure of offices and the clock change will likely see demand drop heavily over the coming week.
React to changes in real-time
How can you best react to changing demand patterns and sources of generation? How can you ensure time-consuming but critical processes affected by the clock change are carried out efficiently?
With IoT-enabled controls, your business can access all the key information about your sites usage on a single platform. This allows you to make instantaneous changes to multiple sites at the touch of a button.
One of our multi-site clients previously spent three weeks making adjustments ahead of the clock changes. This involved engineers attending each site and changing multiple systems. With our system we could make the same changes in a matter of seconds.
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