Britain could be saving around £17 billion every year if it builds a flexible electricity system, MPs have been told. Rachel Fletcher from energy supplier Octopus suggested managing when people use electricity and figuring out how to store electricity in the short and long term. “What we should be doing as an industry is getting our head around the how. How do we keep renewable investors confident while getting the price signals which will keep the overall cost of the energy system down?” she told MPs on the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee. “Lots of studies have suggested we could be saving £16-17 billion a year if we actually properly harness the flexibility that we will have in our homes, in our vehicles, in small-scale storage as well as grid-scale storage and interconnectors across the country.” Experts say that by changing when electricity is used can help significantly reduce the number of wind turbines and solar panels that need to be built. For instance, if electric cars are plugged into the grid and that can send electricity to households across the countries when demand is high, that could provide the equivalent of three nuclear power plants worth of electricity....