One aspect of the controversial Feed-in Tariff review which gets us hot under the collar at Good Energy is the implication that generating your own electricity should be the end of the journey to better energy efficiency.

It’s always been our belief that when you understand where your energy comes from, you value it more and use it less. And for years our customers have been telling us as much.  As one solar PV generator says, “We use electrical appliances during sunny weather and we turn them off at the wall rather than leaving them on standby.”

So we decided to test our hypothesis that being an energy generator makes you an energy saver by doing some quantitative research. We surveyed almost 500 of our FIT customers and asked them a range of questions about their generation and energy usage, and got some really interesting results.

• 65% of generators said that they had changed their consumption pattern to match their generation, indicating an increased awareness of how their generation and usage related to one another.
• Nearly 55% claim to have reduced their energy consumption since installing their generator -nearly a quarter cutting their consumption more than 20%
• 7% of generators claim to use more electricity, but several cited switching from oil or gas to electricity for heating as the reason.
• Two-thirds of generators claimed to have taken additional energy efficiency measures since installing their generation. Most popular measures were increasing loft installation, buying more energy-efficient appliances and triple-glazing windows.

See the full results of the Good Energy generator survey.