Rebecca’s journey to greener living with ScottishPower

The Great Green Challenge on Tour: Episode 4 - flexibility

There’s no shortage of advice when it comes to greener living and making your home more energy efficient. But for many people, separating fact from fiction can be a challenge. ScottishPower’s research¹ found that two thirds of people feel that greener living is out of reach, mainly due to the cost of home improvements or confusion around green tech and tariffs.

I’m not surprised to hear it. For many households, greener living feels like a major commitment. The focus on heat pumps, solar panels² and home EV chargers can give the impression that living more sustainably requires a serious upfront investment.

But greener living isn’t just about big home improvements. For the fourth and final stop on The Great Green Challenge on Tour, I’m off to Barry in the Vale of Glamorgan to meet Rebecca and her family. Their story shows how the small changes can add up.

Starting with one simple step

Like many families, Rebecca and Paul’s household has a lot of energy demands. They live in a three-bedroom terraced house with their teenage son, and Paul’s three other children are also regular visitors. With devices constantly charging and appliances running throughout the day, keeping their energy costs under control could be a challenge at times.

Rebecca wanted to start simple by understanding how, and when, her home uses energy – so getting a smart meter was the natural first step.

Smart meters provide real-time insight into household energy use, helping families like Rebecca’s make more informed decisions about when they use electricity. For Rebecca, gaining this visibility became the foundation for every other energy-saving decision she made.

Why smart meters matter

A lot of people choose to get a smart meter for the convenience of automatic meter readings, but a smart meter can do a lot more than that.

Households with smart meters can:

Discovering Power Saver

Once Rebecca and Paul had their smart meter installed, they were able to take advantage of ScottishPower’s Power Saver⁴ offering.

Power Saver rewards ScottishPower customers for shifting some of their electricity use away from peak times, which are typically 4pm – 8pm, Monday to Friday, when demand is highest as people get home from work or school. Power Savers get 8 one-hour slots of cheaper electricity⁵ at selected times throughout the whole week, so they can save on their electricity costs by shifting high-use tasks like cooking, laundry, or running appliances to times when there’s less demand on the grid and more renewable energy available.

To me, that’s a win-win: supporting a greener energy system while helping households save money on their bills.

With Power Saver, you can stack your one‑hour slots together to create longer blocks of cheaper electricity – or spread them across the week if that suits you better. For Rebecca’s family, being able to choose their cheaper electricity slots has been key. Instead of changing their lifestyle dramatically, they simply schedule their energy-intensive activities to their chosen Power Saver hours, like:

Find out more about how Power Savers are using their slots on our blog.

Rebecca said that one of the standout features of Power Saver is that she isn’t restricted to a narrow weekend window for cheaper electricity. Instead, she chooses the times throughout the week that fit around her family’s routine.

And if their household routine changes from one month to the next, it’s easy for Rebecca to change her chosen hours in the ScottishPower App, as well as being able to track her savings.

How flexibility can help the grid

When Power Savers shift their energy use away from peak times (think 4pm to 8pm on weekdays when lots of people are cooking, washing and heating their homes) to periods of lower demand, it can help the wider energy system.

That’s because when demand on the grid is lower, we can make better use of renewable electricity. And that means Power Savers can play a role in supporting a cleaner energy system, while saving on their energy bills, too.

What might seem a small shift can have a much bigger impact.

Comparing petrol with electric cars

Rebecca’s household also offers a unique perspective on transport choices. While she drives a petrol vehicle, her husband uses an electric car through a workplace scheme, giving them a direct comparison between traditional fuel costs and home charging.

One of the advantages they discuss is predictability. Petrol and diesel prices can go up and down, making it difficult for drivers to estimate their monthly costs. Charging an EV at home, alongside a suitable energy tariff, can provide greater certainty and control over costs.

ScottishPower’s EV Saver tariff lets customers charge at a lower rate of 8.5p⁶ per kWh between midnight and 5am.⁷

Or, for customers with an existing ScottishPower tariff (excluding EV, Heat and Solar Saver), the EV Optimise add-on⁸ lets you charge for 8p per kWh, day or night by automatically scheduling your charging during the cheapest and greenest times.⁹

As more people think about making the switch to an electric car, knowing how home charging can work alongside smart tariffs is an important part to consider.

Building confidence for the future

Perhaps the most important part of Rebecca’s story is that her greener living journey hasn’t stopped.

Having already embraced a smart meter, flexible electricity usage and EV charging, she is now exploring solar panels as a future option.

That’s often how greener living develops - not through a single transformational purchase, but through a series of informed, manageable decisions. Each step builds confidence for the next.

Rebecca’s story shows that greener living can be within reach

My visit to Barry has helped bust the big myth around greener living feeling out of reach. Rebecca’s story helps show that greener living doesn’t always have to be complicated, expensive or overwhelming.

For Rebecca, it started with the small step of understanding her energy use through a smart meter. From there, Power Saver helped her household take greater control of when they use electricity, making it easier to manage bills and fit energy saving into everyday life.

The lesson is simple: You don’t need to do everything at once. Start with one change, learn from it, and build from there.

Because sometimes the smallest steps can lead to the biggest savings, for your household, your wallet and the planet.