Is the National Grid’s energy payment offer too good to be true?

Still resisting installing a smart meter in your home? If so, the National Grid might make you think again – by offering you free electricity. With low temperatures boosting demand for power, and output from wind and solar farms looking a little flaky, the grid needs to cut demand to avoid blackouts. This has prompted it to exercise, for the first time, something called the ‘demand flexibility service’, which offers incentives worth up to £10 or so to customers who are prepared to switch off their appliances for a couple of hours this evening. To take advantage of this offer, you need to have a smart meter and buy your electricity from one of the companies who are signed up to the scheme. Exactly how you are paid depends on which electricity company you use, but Octopus energy, for example, is telling any customers who cut their normal usage by 40 per cent between 4.30