Take a peek at the home of the future: smart energy tech, stylish EVs and more

When you were a kid, how did you imagine your future home? A flying car? Robot helpers to take care of the chores?

We can’t promise you a flying car (though we think the latest generation of EVs is just as futuristic), but we’re actually not too far from the rest! Admittedly, the robot intelligence aspect is more ‘self-scheduling dishwasher’ than ‘robot assistant with inbuilt laser beam’, but when you’re a busy adult with bills to pay, that sounds just as cool.

We’re on the cusp of a major shift in how we – and our homes – use energy. It’ll save you money, save you time, and might just help save the planet too.

So, a few years from now, when you’re being shown around a potential new house by an estate agent (or just being nosey on Rightmove), what could you expect to see?

As we pull into the driveway, you notice there’s an EV charger installed next to the garage (a must-have on new builds). However, you might notice this installation doesn’t look like your average home charger set-up. This charger is, instead, a bi-directional charger – which allows high-tech V2G (vehicle-to-grid) charging.

When you think about V2G - think of it as playing both sides of the power game. You’re not just sipping electricity from the grid, but giving it back too. Your car becomes a mobile energy station - soaking up power when there’s less demand for energy, then discharging it back to the grid (to power your home and others) when there’s more demand.

You can also save money on energy bills, because you can sell the energy from your car back to the Grid. The average V2G driver could save £880 per year compared to those on standard tariffs.

As you explore the ground floor and stroll through to the kitchen, you notice that there’s no boiler in this home of the future. Instead, there’s a heat pump in the corner of the utility room.

Heat pumps are a form of low-carbon central heating that work by drawing in air from outside your home, heating it up, and using it to warm your house and provide hot water. It’s much greener than gas central heating, releasing 470kg of CO2 compared to a gas boiler’s 2,830kg.

As well as being greener, a heat pump can save you up to £545 on your energy bills. Win-win.

By ‘smart’, people usually mean ‘connected to the internet and able to link with other devices’. For example, smart lighting can adjust its brightness based on natural light levels and automatically turn itself on or off at a scheduled time, helping you reduce energy waste.

A smart meter that tracks your energy consumption and automatically submits usage data to your utility provider results in more accurate readings, and opportunities to reduce your energy consumption. It also allows your home appliances to automatically schedule their activities for when energy is cheapest.

Smart appliances typically cost more than their non-smart cousins. In a few years, when the price comes down a bit, could they be a UK home standard?

As we continue our tour, you might spot some solar panels on the roof.

Pretty cool, right? Even in the famously unpredictable British weather, solar panels can generate more electricity than the average UK household needs across a year.

On average, a typical domestic solar panel system in the UK produces around 3,740kWh of electricity per year. To put that into perspective, the average UK home uses roughly 3,400kWh annually - meaning solar panels could more than cover your household electricity needs.

But what happens to any extra energy you generate? That’s where a home battery comes in. It stores the surplus electricity your solar panels produce - like on particularly sunny days or when you’re not using much power - so you can tap into it later, like on a cloudy day or during those shorter winter months.

And if your electricity usage is a bit higher? No problem. A grid-connected solar panel system lets you fall back on the mains supply whenever you need a top-up, ensuring you’ve always got power, whatever the weather.

Your energy needs are different from neighbours’, relatives’, and friends’. So why should your future homes all be on the same energy tariff?

Smart meter installations have just passed the 25 million mark. Over the next few years, most UK homes will have one installed. This means that ‘smart tariffs’ – flexible tariffs that use data from your smart meter to help you use energy more efficiently – will become much more common.

For example, if you have an EV, a smart tariff designed for EV drivers gives you cheap energy at night, and automatically charges your car when energy is cheapest and greenest.

These tariffs are available right now. If you’ve already got an EV, solar panels, or other green home technology, you should start looking for a smart tariff that supports it asap – the saving potential is huge.

As the smart meter rollout completes, smart tariffs will start to become much more common, and save even more people money. Greener and cheaper – what’s not to love?

Six hours of green, low-cost energy per night. Automatic EV charging when energy is cheapest. Savings of over £900 compared to fuelling a petrol or diesel car.

There’s a lot to love about our Intelligent Octopus Go - EV Saver smart tariff, available to every Intelligent EV customer, no exceptions. And, when you lease an EV with our Intelligent EV package, you’ll also receive:

• 10% off one-tap public charging with our Electroverse app
• Service, maintenance, and repairs on us
• Big discounts on green energy tech like solar panels and heat pumps