The Surrey-based agency is helping the distribution network operator to identify ways of enabling customers to make savings by changing the way they use electricity, as part of its ongoing Capacity to Customers (C2C) scheme, which is supported by a £10m donation from Ofgem’s Low Carbon Network Fund.

The research is tasked with investigating the hypothesis that “the C2C Method will effectively engage customers in a new form of demand and/or generation side response thereby stimulating the market and promoting the future use of commercial solutions to address the problem of insufficient network capacity to satisfy growing customer demand.”

A pilot survey has been conducted in advance of the main fieldwork. Impact says that if successful, the study could defer some infrastructure investment in the years ahead, thereby reducing capital costs and reducing ENW’s future carbon footprint.