The night that James Norton told me to turn off the lights
The British actor has a hot new role: he is the voice on Alexa that tells you to avoid using 'dirty' energy. He gives Helen Rumbelow his best 'power moves'
Over the past few days I have developed a niche to spice up the domestic load, which I can describe only as eco-housewife kink. If I want to turn on the oven or, naughtier still, a hot wash, I first ask James Norton. The British actor most famous for his turn as the psychopathic serial killer in the Yorkshire crime drama Happy Valley whispers his instructions straight in my kitchen.
When I ask him, early evening, he tells me it's not the right time to use energy "because the grid is busy", his bedtime voice soft and lulling, "and filled with fossil fuels". Hypnotised, I step away from the appliances and wonder when climate change got this hot. Last night, though, Norton's tone changed; he encouraged me to "plug in" as somewhere on a dark hill the country's wind turbines were going full pelt. "Let's turn our dials up, fill up our drums__" James yes – what then, when my drum is full? "And get a wash on."
Norton is the voice (seductive – and only slightly sinister) of this new Alexa function , deviced by the electricity company Ovo but available free to anyone with the smart speaker in the UK using the prompt "Alexa, open Ovo Power Nap". It allows us, for the first time, to react flexibly to how overstrained and "dirty" the national grid is at any given point. I know your reaction might be that this is either a gimmick, futuristic or just a plain faff – that was certainly mine. But the more I listened to Norton, and then the energy experts behind it, the more I understood this is a change that has to come. If the neighbours get shirty about my spin cycle waking them at 3 am (Norton thought it was a good idea) I'll say it's our moral obligation.
To wean ourselves off polluting coal and gas, to become less vulnerable to Putin, to save money and the world one tumble dry at the time, Britain is growing more reliant on wind energy. Our renewable capacity has quadrupled in a decade. But you can't switch on the wind. If moving to renewables is going to work for us we have to find a way to use (and store) electricity when the wind is blowing. Just as you would glance out of the window to check if it's sunny before putting the sheets on the line, now we need to check if it's blowy before charging the car . Or, rather, ask Norton. It's the first step towards a future where our electric car batteries are pressed into service to help to power our homes, where we have a battery in the loft and an intelligent app that manages our appliances so they can tilt their energy use towards our windmills.
Which is how I got to talk with Norton about the proud British tradition of drying our pants over the radiator. This is, believe it or not, a treat for Norton, or so he claims – "to be actually promoting something which isn't me flouncing around in a costume". Ovo chose Norton for his unpatronising sound ("If I'm smug, I'll re-record it", he tells me) , think more his gentle RP vicar in the drama series Grantchester than the broad Yorkshire accent of the murderer in Happy Valley. "Do you think I would have had more authority if I spoke as Tommy Lee Royce?" he asks , speaking by Zoom from his London home and suddenly terrifying "Yes, I could have done 'Switch that f***ing washing machine off, you bastard!'"
Even as it is, he is not sure he has thought through the ramifications of having his voice on Alexa. "I guarantee that friends who come over will just abuse it." These potentially include his father who has an Alexa in his North Yorkshire home, and whom Norton, now 38, regularly nags on lifestyle issues, but not this one.
"Thing is, he doesn't use any energy anyway," Norton says. "He's 'three fleeces and a walk with the dog to warm up'. That's his vibe."
That thermostat-avoiding childhood has lived on in Norton's refit of his home. When the old gas boiler had to be replaced, Norton went all in: an air source heat pump on the roof, plus solar panels and wodges of insulation. Now he barely bothers the national grid, despite wearing only one jumper.
"Because I'm from North Yorkshire, my dad will, without any hint of irony, walk around with a jacket and a scarf in the middle of the day, " Norton says.
"When challenged, 'Dad, it's f****ing freezing in here', he will reply 'It's absolutely fine,' not noticing he can hardly move for the layers. I'm from that kind of world."
It might be why Norton says he "loves" cold water swimming. "One of the benefits is that you build up these brown fat cells that can help keep our weight steady. Since central heating scientists have found our bodies are changing, our brown fat cells are depleted. So yeah, we should be embracing all this."
Central heating is making us fat? "It's making us fat. It's making us fat and it's making us depressed. Yes."
For those of us who remember the Economy 7 tariff being introduced in Britain in 1978, the idea of "intelligent demand" won't sound that different. Electricity is normally cheaper at night, hence the concept of storage heaters. The peak time for domestic use is early weekday evenings, which is when dirty carbon-based power plants run on overdrive. Ovo has a "power move" challenge for its customers, who are financially rewarded if they reduce their electricity between 6pm and 9pm. British Gas offers half-price electricity on Sundays between 11am and 4pm. After the start of the war in Ukraine the British government, through electricity suppliers, ran trials of incentivising hour-long power-offs on winter evenings. One customer tweeted that she took them so seriously she filled a flask with hot water and lit candles. This however is different says Ita Kettleborough, director of the Energy Transitions Commission, an international think tank focused on climate change mitigation. First, now that consumers are being asked to get rid of gas boilers (they heat 80 per cent of homes) and petrol cars, the demand for electricity is going to rise.
"There will be massive additional pressure on our grid" she says, "Just thinking about heating homes, massive extra peaks in the morning and evening, massive peaks in winter."
Second, that electricity will increasingly come from wind. Unlike Australia's solar power or France's nuclear, wind is erratic. "In the past, we have matched supply and demand: if everyone puts the kettle on, the fossil fuels are burnt to provide that electricity" Kettleborough says. "But you can't turn on the wind."
In short, we can't go on as before. Two things have to change. First, getting used to time our electricity use will be "crucial", she says. For instance, having waited all day for Norton's "power nap" to tell me it was a good time to run the washing machine, at 11.30pm I was finally given the go-ahead. Kettleborough thinks this will evolve into apps that will take care of timing the washing, car-charging or similar to profit from price incentives. Octopus is the pioneer energy company in this field, the first to offer "agile" pricing hour to hour. Kettleborough makes a game of the Octopus app – when she's alerted that electricity will be expensive for the next hour. "I take a walk intead of watching TV". She now thinks she's good at predicting cheap days. "If there's a lot of wind, I think this is a good renewables day, I'm sure the UK is doing great."
Third, there will be much greater reliance on batteries, both at scale and at home. Now, if it's really windy, the turbines are often turned off to avoid overloading the grid. To solve such problems , in 2017 Elon Musk's company Tesla built the world's largest lithium-ion battery in Australia for £10 million. Slightly more affordable are the Tesla "Powerwall" batteries, the new middle class status symbol. On sale for £5,000, they may become a good investment if pared with solar panels and energy pricing starts to become more changeable. Experts predict that the batteries in our electric cars will be used in homes too, with Octopus trialling this.
I speak to Owen Anderson, head of sustainability at Ovo. He says the temperature drop at night tends to lead to greater wind. "So I always put the washing on overnight. My house is like a nightclub in the middle of the night, because of all the stuff running."
What about your neighbours, I ask. "They're on board. I've spent a year convincing them, so they do it too."
Norton doesn't use the tumble dryer, another inherited trait from his Yorkshire childhood. " We had a washing line, but it's Yorkshire so it always rains. I just remember growing up with radiators covered in clothes all the time." He has a heat pump that uses underfloor heating, but he left one radiator in the house, "with loads of wooden slats above it, so I can dry massive amounts. It's brilliant. Hand on heart I avoid the tumble dryer."
He has an American coming to home-sit while he's away filming. He'll resist the urge to remotely turn down the thermostat. "I hope I'll be a good enough host not to spy on my guests – but it has crossed my mind whether I am turning into my father". However, Americans think not having a tumble dryer is "insane", he says. "I think that is a very important cultural difference. One we should be proud of ".
So pants on the radiator is a patriotic act? "It is, you're so right. It's so British."
So patriotic , along with doing our duty by making a flask of tea and "switching that f***ing washing machine off, you bastard" for those hours when there isn't quite enough wind energy for everyone.
