Futureproofing the network for increased renewables

Support to ensure everyone has the essential energy they need

National Grid ESO is the electricity system operator for Great Britain, ensuring that everyone has the essential energy they need by balancing supply and demand every second of every day. During a period of significant change and increasing demand on the electricity network, it was necessary to engage electricity generators—who may not have recognized themselves as such—to mandate updates to their generation equipment for a more stable and resilient network.

Engagement campaign highlights:

Promoting energy network innovation

Challenge – ensuring electricity generator owners make mandatory updates to equipment

To deliver a more stable and resilient network, ESO needed to reach electricity generator owners and ensure they made mandatory updates to their generation equipment. But our audience was varied and did not recognise themselves as electricity generators. For example, they could be a farmer with a wind turbine, a factory owner with a solar array, or a hospital with CHP generation. Because of this, they risked missing both the compliance deadline and the funding window for financial support.

Solution – launching awareness-to-action engagement funnel

Launched “Futureproof your power” to raise awareness of the mandatory changes and encourage generator owners to take action by moving through the awareness-to-action engagement funnel. Developed a creative campaign proposition, campaign identity, landing page, self-serve activation tool and hero video to deliver the key messages that supported action. Built out a targeted “always on” digital ad campaign using paid social, display and programmatic to drive traffic to this content and the suite of tools. Supported this with a direct stakeholder engagement programme on the ground including events and outreach.

Results – 94% of generation made changes successfully before deadline

The targeted digital campaign and self-serve tool reached over 5M users. Over 48K users visited the landing page, with an estimated 38K engaged sessions at an engagement rate of 73%. Thanks to the programme, National Grid ESO and the UK DNOs have confirmed more than 24GW of compliant generation capacity with nearly 30% of all UK generation and 94% of the generation that needed to make the changes successfully did so within the deadline.

Impact – £44 million in savings each year in network balancing costs

In making the changes, generator owners embedded their assets, and the wider electricity network with greater stability, which will result in National Grid ESO saving £44M every year on network balancing costs. Thanks to the programme improving network resilience and stability in this way, National Grid ESO is also exploring options to reduce levels of network inertia, which will trigger cost savings of £65M per annum and support UK decarbonisation targets.

Digital campaign and impact

What We Did

Hero Film

Launch film explaining the role of an electricity generator and the importance of updates.

Self-Serve Tool

Developed to capture user information and facilitate action, available at Futureproof Your Power.

Email Campaign

Triggered emails with tailored information to encourage engagement had open rates of 75% with a click-through rate of 35%.

Paid media campaign

Devised a paid media strategy and created assets to be shown across programmatic, LinkedIn, Meta, X and Google Display Network channels, a campaign that contributed to a 73% engagement rate and 48k users visiting the website.