If you’ve invested in smart home gadgets throughout your home, you could be rewarded with cheaper British Gas energy bills. It’s all thanks to a new partnership between British Gas and Samsung, which alerts you about the cheapest times to use your appliances.
British Gas is integrating its services into Samsung’s SmartThings app, which lets you monitor and control all internet-connected appliances and devices in your home, including smart thermostats, ovens and fridge-freezers, video doorbells, smart TVs, and more.
Samsung has a useful support page to help you determine whether your existing appliances and smart home gadgets are compatible with Samsung SmartThings.
PeakSave, a service from British Gas that offers discounted energy prices during off-peak times including half-price electricity between 11am and 4pm on Sundays until the beginning of March, will be baked into SmartThings, so you can schedule your appliances around these discounted periods.
If you’ve got the SmartThings app or a Samsung Smart TV, you can be alerted about the cheapest energy prices from British Gas during the day.
Samsung has already coded a number of energy-saving and monitoring features into its SmartThings platform, but these become much more powerful with the integration of British Gas and up-to-date pricing alerts direct from the energy supplier
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Samsung and British Gas say the partnership will boost consumer energy saving. If you schedule your washing machine, dishwasher, and thermostats for the right times of day via the SmartThings app — it could unlock some serious savings.
In addition, the new joint-venture between the companies will see British Gas begin to include Samsung heat pumps in its offering to UK households as part of efforts to support reaching net zero targets by 2050.
It will see specially trained British Gas surveyors and engineers working with consumers to explain the benefits of heat pumps and then conducting installations.
Deborah Honig, chief customer officer at Samsung UK, said: “This collaboration will help educate consumers on the benefits of moving to heat pumps as well as how to manage their overall energy use through our leading home management app, SmartThings.
“It is an exciting moment for the technology and energy sectors to offer innovative ways for customers to manage their energy with less effort.
“Through SmartThings, we are putting the power directly into the customer’s hands so they can take greater control of how they manage their homes and energy use more efficiently.
“There are also many more exciting possibilities for us to help customers reap the multiple benefits of a connected home, moving forwards.”
Catherine O’Kelly, managing director of British Gas Energy at British Gas, said: “This venture is a big milestone in providing British customers with simple and affordable ways to help save money on their energy bills and cut carbon.
“This is the first step in our collaboration with Samsung, which will see us combine our strengths and bring more innovative solutions to the market.
“At the core of this venture is a shared commitment to helping customers manage their energy usage and carbon emissions through new technologies which will play an integral role in supporting the UK’s net zero drive.”
With the UK committed to reaching net zero by 2050, the Government has a scheme in place to encourage people to upgrade their boiler from fossil fuel-based systems to greener ones, such as heat pumps.
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Lord Callanan, minister for energy efficiency and green finance, said: “We want more households to benefit from switching to greener energy and I am pleased to see Samsung and British Gas teaming up to help consumers on this journey.
“Since we increased our Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant to £7,500 – applications tripled in the first week, helping more hardworking families to install a heat pump in their homes.”
Additional Reporting By Martyn Landi, PA Technology Correspondent
