Octopus Power-ups: supplier to offer free energy during surplus periods

Octopus says it will cover electricity costs for a couple of hours at a time when there is excess renewable power.

Energy bills may finally be falling, but they’re still almost double what they were a couple of years ago.

That means many households will still be on the lookout for more ways to cut their bills.

With that in mind, a new trial from Octopus Energy could be of interest.

After all, it's promising customers free energy.

Octopus Power-ups explained

The supplier has launched a new scheme called Octopus Power-ups, which will offer some households free energy to help the grid make use of excess renewable power.

At present, energy from wind and solar effectively goes to waste when there isn’t enough demand from households to meet the amount of power being generated as there is no way of storing it.

Octopus said it wants to “unlock this energy to benefit customers, reduce consumption at other times, avoid wastage, stabilise the grid and most importantly put money back into customer’s pockets.”

Starting on 14 August, the scheme will initially only be available to customers in the South and East of England, but there are plans to roll it out to more areas in time.

Here’s how it works.

How to get free electricity

The first thing to stress is that you aren’t going to get free power for days on end.

Instead, Octopus said you’ll likely get a ‘Power-up’ for an hour or two at a time, often in the middle of the day but this could differ depending on where you live.

It's unclear at this stage how often these Power-ups will come along.

When one does, you’ll usually be notified the day before but sometimes you’ll get less notice.

Once the window opens, you’ll be able to use as much electricity as you like.

“It’s a perfect time to do the hoovering, run your heat pump or immersion heater, run the dishwasher or washing machine, make dinner, you name it,” Octopus said in a release.

The company added it would “work out how much you used during each Power-up and pay you back the difference as account credit every few weeks so that any electricity you use in Power-ups will be free.”

The scheme is expected to run for at least the next year.

If you’re interested in taking part, you’ll obviously need to be an Octopus customer who lives in the South or East of England.

You will also need to actively opt in to Power-ups to take part.

Sign-ups will open from 10 August.