Five habits for products that reach older homes

Half-hourly smart-meter data allows a retailer to price almost any pattern of hours. That does not mean a household can follow it. I design tariffs around one rule a customer can repeat without opening the app, then test whether they actually can. Our two-band tariff has a single cheaper window, from ten in the morning until three in the afternoon, every day of the year. Complexity belongs in automation: households with a heat-pump water heater or a home battery can choose a four-band structure that their equipment follows for them. I work with supply and trading on what each band costs us, and with the customer centre on what people say during their first month. A tariff that only engineers and enthusiasts understand quietly moves risk onto everybody else.

Power-saving events matter on the evenings when supply is tight, which in Nagano is often a winter evening well below freezing. I design our events so that suggested actions never include turning off heating. We name the washing machine, the dryer and the water heater instead, and we say plainly that warmth comes first for anyone elderly or unwell. Rewards combine a small payment for taking part with a payment per kilowatt-hour reduced against a published baseline. I explain that baseline in one paragraph, because a reward a customer cannot predict feels like a lottery ticket. Customers enrol by app, by telephone or by returning a postcard, and nobody is enrolled automatically. Finance reviews the scheme each spring against the peak procurement it avoided.

About a third of our electricity customers are over seventy. Many manage their accounts on paper, and a growing number rely on a son or daughter living in Nagoya, Tokyo or Osaka. I designed a family-access arrangement through which an account holder can authorise a relative to see bills and usage, receive alerts and update contact details without transferring the contract. We confirm the authorisation by telephone with the account holder, and it can be withdrawn by post at any time. Older customers also receive important notices in large print with one telephone number. I do not treat these as separate products for a separate segment. They are tests the main product has to pass, and when a design fails them, we change the design rather than the customer.

A household electricity bill in Japan combines our price with a fuel-cost adjustment that moves monthly, a renewable energy surcharge reset each spring and, in several periods since 2023, government relief that appeared and then ended. Customers see one total. I chair a monthly review at which product, supply and customer-centre colleagues predict which movements will surprise people, and we write the explanation before bills are issued. Customers who choose alerts receive a mid-month forecast whenever their bill is likely to exceed the same month last year by more than twenty per cent. The notice names the main cause in a sentence. Bill shock cannot be removed from a market tied to imported fuel. It can become a surprise that arrives early, with its reason attached.

Households that installed rooftop solar under the feed-in tariff were paid a high fixed price for exported power for ten years. When those contracts end, the export price falls sharply, and owners receive a stream of offers. I designed our response as a choice among three options shown side by side: sell surplus power to us, add a battery through a ten-year subscription, or remain with the existing purchaser at its post-contract price. Each comparison uses the household's own half-hourly data and shows the annual result net of every fee. We also state who owns the battery, who replaces it and what happens if the house is sold. Backup during snow-related outages is a genuine benefit for many customers, but I describe it as a benefit, never as a saving.