Electric cars are being integrated into National Grid’s Balancing Mechanism, in a move that will eventually see hundreds of thousands of EVs used as a virtual power plant.

The mechanism uses flexible assets – things that produce and consume capacity – like EVs, batteries and gas power stations to ensure supply meets demand and the lights stay on.

A National Grid ESO trial has been running for seven months using only Octopus customers with electric cars to balance power. Its success paved the way for other suppliers to do the same and offer a greener alternative to gas power stations.

Octopus customers taking part in the mechanism through the Intelligent Octopus Go tariff get heavily reduced charging rates. And every energy bill payer benefits through a reduction in system balancing costs.

Extrapolating the results of the trial, if all ten million EVs that are expected to be in the UK by 2030 participated in the Balancing Mechanism, system costs would be reduced by almost £100m a year and could prevent abundant renewable energy from being constrained during low demand.

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