Thousands of drivers have been paid to charge their electric vehicles as part of a trial, with experts calling for further support to benefit motorists.
Ohme has rewarded electric car owners with £750,000 through an energy flexibility trial in partnership with Crowdflex.
The trial was conducted between May 2024 and September 2025 to see how households can increase flexibility in the national grid by changing energy use habits.
The Crowdflex trial saw drivers encouraged to charge their electric vehicles whenever they were at home, with owners being rewarded for their charging.
The trial, which was led by the National Electricity System Operator (NESO) for Great Britain, allowed Ohme to have more time to manage charging sessions.
This was done by having motorists plug their electric cars in for a longer period of time, and more often than they normally would.
Ohme, which is the UK’s largest electric home charging company, reported that the trial was successful in helping the management of grid services.
It saw plug-in rates surge by 40 per cent, allowing drivers to unlock more rewards, in addition to lowering carbon emissions.
Drivers across the country were paid to charge their vehicles at home
|
GETTY/PA
David Watson, CEO of Ohme, suggested that domestic charging flexibility could help drivers save more than £470million a year in energy costs by 2036.
“We’ve demonstrated that our customers will shift their plug-in behaviour when needed, delivering significant flexible capacity through dynamic automated charging,” he added.
Despite the success of the trial, Mr Watson called on the Government and other key players to support the initiative.
He said better coordination would give “greater value and more rewards to our customers” when charging their electric vehicles at home.
Ohme paid out £750,000 to electric car owners who took part in energy trials
|
OHMEMore than 400 flexibility events took place over 13 months of trials in which Ohme turned up or turned down home chargers depending on what was required from the grid.
Up to 20,000 customers were used in each trial, with almost 150MW of electricity being “flexed” in the biggest trial by any home EV charging company.
Marzia Zafar, Deputy Director of Governance for Data and Digitalisation at Ofgem, said: “Crowdflex is more than a trial, it’s a blueprint for the future of domestic flexibility.
“By developing real-life data-driven models that demonstrate how households can reliably support the grid, were laying the foundation for a smarter, more decentralised energy system.
Drivers could save hundreds of pounds a year by charging their electric cars at home
|
GETTY
“This work is critical to delivering the ambitions of Clean Power by 2030 and ensuring that consumers are at the heart of the energy transition.”
The Crowdflex project is being delivered by Ohme, OVO, Centre for Net Zero, ERM, AWS, National Grid Electricity Distribution and Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks.
It has also received backing through Ofgem’s Strategic Innovation Fund in partnership with Innovate UK.