British Gas offers half-price electricity on Sundays in summer 2023

Britain’s biggest household energy supplier is offering half-price power to hundreds of thousands of customers every Sunday throughout the summer.

British Gas said that it would refund half the unit rate for electricity used by participating customers between 11am and 4pm each Sunday.

The scheme is designed to encourage households to shift energy-intensive activities such as using the washing machine at “off-peak” times when electricity supplies are typically plentiful because national demand is lower.

Demand is low on a Sunday because fewer businesses and factories are operating, while sunny summer days also typically see strong generation from solar panels.

About 150,000 British Gas customers are registered and a further 50,000 are in the process of signing up to the scheme, which is open to anyone who has a smart meter providing half-hourly usage readings or who is willing to get one installed. British Gas is under pressure to encourage more customers to accept smart meters after missing installation targets last year.

British Gas said it could pay out up to £3 million between this Sunday and September 24, assuming that many more of its customers sign up to take part and spent their Sundays cooking and doing the laundry or housework.

However, savings for each customer are likely to be modest: a household using the washing machine for an hour during the half-price periods for each of the 14 Sundays would save about £4.52 in total, compared with using it at other times. Spending an hour every Sunday afternoon this summer vacuuming, meanwhile, could save a total of £2.97 compared with doing the housework at other times of the week.

British Gas established the PeakSave scheme to enable households to access reward payments offered by National Grid last winter for cutting usage at peak times to help reduce the risk of blackout. The National Grid scheme is expected to be used again this winter.

The announcement comes as British Gas braces for a furore next month when it is expected to report that profits in the first six months of the year hit an all-time high of more than £850 million, after the regulator Ofgem increased the energy price cap to compensate suppliers for setting it too low in the past.