Lighting up Christmas: EDF supercharges Christmas Day with free electricity
- EDF is helping to ease Christmas costs by giving customers eight hours of free electricity on Christmas Day
- The initiative is automatically available to all customers who sign-up to the December Sunday Saver Challenge
- It comes as research finds most (92%) Brits will spend up to 10 hours using devices and appliances on Christmas Day, but 44% are worried about the impact on their bills
- Further savings can be made for those that shift their usage away from weekday peak hours, to earn up to 16 hours free electricity on Sundays in December too
EDF is giving the gift of free electricity this Christmas as it offers customers eight hours of free electricity on the big day; Wednesday 25th December.
All customers need to do to access the Yuletide savings is sign-up to December’s Sunday Saver Challenge and they will automatically get the free hours between 8am-4pm on Christmas Day.
The initiative, announced today, is part of EDF’s Sunday Saver Challenge, which gives customers the opportunity to earn more free electricity on Sundays in December by shifting their electricity use away from weekday peak hours (4pm - 7pm).
The announcement comes as new research finds Brits expect to spend up to 10 hours using devices and appliances on Christmas Day, including four hours cooking up their festive feasts - 69% longer than usual.
Households will host an average of six people over the festive period, with 70% saying they’ll probably use extra appliances to cook Christmas dinner and over a third (35%) will start to cook between 8-9am.
It’s not just the dinner that adds hours to our electricity usage on the big day. Families will be powering exterior decorative lighting, doing more dishwasher cycles and vacuuming more than usual.
In fact, matching cooking on the top spot of Christmas energy guzzlers is the TV, with over half (60%) of Brits tuning into the box for longer than usual – with Christmas movie marathons and the King’s Speech high up on our agendas.
This planned increase in energy use leaves 44% worried about the impact of Christmas Day on their household bills, but 29% of those say that knowing they have free electricity would help give them a bit more peace of mind.
EDF’s Sunday Saver Challenge launched in September 2024, with customers who took part in October’s challenge finding it easy, rewarding or motivating, and 88% would recommend it to friends or family. Three quarters (76%) of customers who signed up got at least four hours of free electricity in October.
The most popular ways customers made use of their free electricity on a Sunday were getting on top of laundry (85%), using the tumble dryer (53%) and cooking a roast (41%), while some batch cooked for the week (26%) or charged their electric vehicle (8%).
Rich Hughes, Director of Retail at EDF, said: “We know the festive period can be a time of increased costs for us all, so we’re thrilled to give back to our customers and hopefully make electricity costs one less thing to worry about when it comes to Christmas Day.
“With Sunday Saver, EDF is helping families across the country enjoy their favourite festive past-times for free, and not just on the Sundays in December - on Christmas Day too. Customers are really making the most of our Sunday Saver challenge already, so whether it’s charging new gifts, or using more appliances in the kitchen than usual; we’re supercharging Christmas - because, at EDF, change is in our power.”
EDF’s free hours of electricity on Christmas Day are available automatically to all customers who sign up to its December Sunday Saver Challenge and will be applied to their account just after Christmas.
To find out more about EDF’s Sunday Saver challenge and to register for the December challenge, click here.
ENDS
Notes to Editors
Research conducted by 3Gem across 2,000 UK adults, November 2024.
Research of 4,198 Sunday Saver participants conducted by EDF, November 2024.
Free electricity based on a fair-usage cap of 22.5kWh
About EDF
EDF is driving the transition towards An Electric Britain – a secure, affordable, low-carbon future for everyone. As Britain’s biggest generator of zero carbon electricity, we are investing more than £100 million weekly in Britain’s electricity infrastructure. We supply millions of customers with electricity and help homes and businesses switch to electricity for heating, transport and industrial processes.
We operate five nuclear power stations and more than 35 onshore wind farms and three offshore wind farms. Since 2009, EDF has invested almost £9 billion in the nuclear fleet to improve reliability and extend station lifetimes. The five generating stations currently supply about 12% of the UK’s electricity demand.
EDF is building the UK's nuclear renaissance with the construction of a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point C. We are a minority investor (12.5%) in and major supplier to a replica plant at Sizewell C in Suffolk. Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C will provide low carbon electricity to meet 14% of UK demand and power around 12 million homes. EDF Group companies Framatome and Arabelle Solutions have a presence in the UK and manufacture critical equipment such as reactor pressure vessels and turbines.
EDF is enabling its 5 million customers, both in business and at home, to choose electric solutions that save cash and carbon, whether it is buying an electric car, generating and storing electricity, selling energy back to the grid or installing solar panels or a heat pump. In 2025, EDF’s Customers business was ranked as one of the Sunday Times’s Best Place to Work.
It is also one of the UK’s leading developers of renewable energy through EDF power solutions UK and Ireland. We have more than 2GW of renewable generation in operation and over 10GW in construction, planning and development across a range of technologies including onshore and offshore wind, solar and battery storage.
We are one of the largest suppliers to British business and a leading supplier of innovative energy solutions that are helping businesses become more energy independent. In addition, the company’s energy services business, Dalkia, is one of the UK and Ireland’s largest technical service providers.
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