Frontier Agriculture is harvesting solar with Octopus’ Electric Match
Electric Match is changing the way we do business energy.
We share the power you produce across your business’ sites. So, you can generate energy at one property and send it where you need it in real-time.
Electric Match is flexible, adapting to different business models and energy setups. But what remains the same is that your energy is green, traceable and easier on your pockets.
Today we're looking into how Electric Match is working for Frontier Agriculture: how the business is benefitting, shifting production and planning for the seasons ahead.
Meet Frontier Agriculture: sowing the seeds of agricultural innovation
Founded in 2005, Frontier Agriculture has become the UK’s leading crop production and grain marketing business.
Employing over 1,100 people across 46 sites in England and Scotland, Frontier has a hand in the production and distribution of a whopping 5 million tonnes of grain each year.
And where does all that grain go? 🌾 From breakfast cereals to bread, cooking oil to animal feed, Frontier Agriculture plays a part in your everyday.
But with grain power comes grain responsibility
Frontier is on a green mission: to reduce its carbon emissions and create a more sustainable future for agriculture.
At Octopus Energy for Business, we always want to support customers in boosting their green credentials. So, when Frontier joined Electric Match back in 2023 it was a partnership made in hayven 😇
So, how does Electric Match work for Frontier Agriculture?
Frontier has its own solar generation. However, while some Frontier sites were basking in surplus solar power ☀️, others were still reliant on the grid.
Electric Match provided a solution: treating Frontier's whole portfolio as one. We share any spare energy generated at one site with others in real-time. Sharing its own homegrown energy means Frontier only pays the cost of moving its power from A to B.
We call this live sharing time-matching ⏳ It’s cheaper and lets Frontier see exactly where its energy is going from and to.
“Moving to Electric Match has almost doubled the amount of our own renewable electricity that can be used at our sites, and our grid-purchased electricity has fallen significantly,”
David Alliston, Group Operations and Supply Chain Director at Frontier Agriculture
Roof-mounted solar at Frontier’s site in Sandy, Bedfordshire
Frontier is powering up on savings 💰 and helping the planet in the process 🌎
Up to
16%
saved on monthly bills from
time-matching
Over
14%
of Frontier's energy is free due to
time-matching
Frontier has an impressive 3.7 MW of solar capacity spread across 10 of its facilities. When one location generates more energy than it can use, we share that power across Frontier’s other sites. This excess solar produces 14% of all the energy Frontier uses across its portfolio. Because this energy is homegrown, Frontier can use it for free.
That’s over 800,000kWh of free solar goodness made in one year by Frontier, for Frontier - shared by Electric Match.
This chart shows how Frontier Agriculture benefitted from Electric Match across a bright British summer 😎
Frontier’s matching potential ebbs and flows with the seasons. We can see here that the business' matched energy begins to peak in May and tails off as the summer comes to a close in August.
This is because solar is Frontier's main source of generation. So the more the sun shines, the higher the percentage of its energy that can be matched.
Let's zoom in on how that looks over the course of a sunny day 🗓️
The pattern of Frontier’s energy consumption follows the shape of its solar generation:
From 5am, Frontier's renewable production begins to fire up, reaching its peak around midday. The more consumption Frontier can shift to periods of high generation, the higher its time-matching and savings will be.
If Frontier needs more energy than it can produce, we’ll cover the rest with Octopus’ standard 100% green electricity.
What is Frontier Agriculture doing to increase time-matching on-site? 🚜
“We’ve tried to work smarter when it comes to how we use our electricity during the daytime,” says David Alliston.
Wherever possible, Frontier shifts its high-energy jobs to times when it's producing enough solar to power them.
Take the colour sorter at Frontier's site in Saddlebow, Norfolk. This machine uses its powers of detection to scan and sort grains by colour and size, weeding out even the smallest nasties that sneak in.
It's the ultimate quality controller and it requires a lot of juice⚡
By delaying turning this on, Frontier has found it can boost its time-matching and get the most out of the sunshine.
Frontier, Electric Match and Beyond
With Electric Match technology, we can help to propel more businesses toward a sustainable future. After all, Electric Match isn't just about cutting costs, it's about cultivating green power for all. As for Frontier, it'll keep working with Octopus to become ever more sustainable.
“The energy we procure through Octopus is 100% renewable ... The tariff encourages us to invest even more in renewable energy generation, whilst having the freedom to be less location-specific for those investments”
David Alliston, Group Operations and Supply Chain Director at Frontier
If you’d like to join the wave of businesses maximising their generation and saving big with Electric Match, then look no further.
Move your business to Electric Match
Join Electric Match
Published on 11th July 2024 by:
Hey I'm Constantine, welcome to Octopus Energy!
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