This summer, Octopus Energy started giving electricity for free.
You do need to have a smart meter and be a member of their Octoplus reward scheme in order to sign up, and you do need to sign up, but if you do, you get an email dropping in your inbox now and again telling you that you will be getting an hour of free electricity session the following day.
Free electricity sessions happen when the forecast is good for renewable energy production (i.e., lots of wind where the wind turbines are) but demand is low (usually weekend afternoons). The idea is to plan ahead so you can shift your electricity use to that particular hour in order to crank up the metered kWh of use – do a big load of washing, hoover the house, bake a cake, mow the lawn, charge the home battery, whatever you can squeeze into an hour. What you have managed to add on top of what you normally use during that hour will be free.
Since the scheme started in August, I have taken part in seven free electricity sessions, which gave me £4.22 worth of free electricity in total. Okay, it’s not a huge amount, but it’s money I would have had to pay to do the same things at other times.
Last winter, Octopus also had another scheme, called saving sessions, which is basically the opposite of the free electricity sessions. You get push notification telling you to avoid using electricity during a specified period when the demand is expected to be high – usually around 5-7 pm – and lots of fossil gas would need to be burned to meet it (usually because not enough wind is blowing: the dreaded Dunkelflaute*). The amount of kWh you saved compared to your normal use is converted to Octoplus points. Saving sessions is part of a government initiative called the Demand Flexibility Service administered by the National Energy System Operator (NESO) to balance the grid while minimising the use of (very expensive) fossil gas and the associated emissions.
Just as the retail price of electricity shoots up at peak demand during Dunkelflaute, the price goes down when there’s lots of cheap renewable energy to meet the demand and can even go negative if the supply exceeds the demand. The free electricity sessions are there to pass the savings on to Octopus customers.
I am an Octopus customer by chance rather than choice – Octopus took over the company I was with, Bulb Energy, which went under during the energy price crisis following the Russian invasion of Ukraine -but I do like the company’s stance for decarbonisation and innovative tariffs and products to facilitate it. If you are interested in switching to Octopus Energy, you can use my referral link to get a £50 sign-up bonus.
* German for ‘dark doldrums’, when there is no sun or wind to make renewable energy.