Octopus Energy

About Octopus Energy

Octopus Energy is a relatively young green energy company, focused on increasing the use of renewable power in the British national grid.

Their parent company, Octopus Investments, provides funding for sustainable energy infrastructure developments such as wind turbines, solar farms, and anaerobic digestion systems. They are the largest investor in solar energy in the UK.

Tariff and Pricing Details

There are three main tariffs for gas and electricity customers from Octopus:

• Octopus Fixed: Armed with a two-year fixed price guarantee, the fixed rate tariff that Octopus provides lets you to know exactly how much your energy will cost, while protecting you from price rises with inflation.
• Flexible Octopus: This is their standard variable tariff, which can increase or decrease with the cost of the energy supply, as well as with inflation.
• Octopus Promise: The rate you pay for energy on this tariff is set by the Ofgem price cap. Introduced in 2019 to make sure that customers were not being overcharged, especially when wholesale prices decreased, the Octopus Promise rate will always be £50 cheaper than the cap.

If you are an Octopus Energy customer with a smart meter installed in your home, there are also a few specialised tariffs on offer:

• Octopus Go gives customers access to a super off-peak electricity rate between 00:30 and 04:30 every day, giving cheap rates for those who need to charge their electric vehicle at night.
• Outgoing Octopus rewards those with renewable energy sources in their homes, such as solar panels, by paying customers for the electricity they add back into the national grid.
• Agile Octopus uses the smart meter to charge for electricity depending on the wholesale costs compared to demand. This means those who use energy outside of peak times will save money.

Octopus are so confident that customers will be happy with the prices that they pay and the service that they do not charge any exit fees.

Octopus Energy Fuel Mix

Octopus Energy use 100% green, renewable energy from sources such as solar, wind and hydroelectric dams, and they do not burn any fossil fuels. They also invest in growing trees, as well as providing green energy in less developed parts of the world.

Coal

0%

Natural Gas

0%

Nuclear

0%

Renewable*

100%

Other

0%

*Wind
Solar
Biomass
Wave and tidal
Hydroelectric
Geothermal

Octopus Energy Acquisitions

One way that Octopus Energy have managed to expand their business has been through acquiring and forming partnerships with competitors, thereby taking on more customers and increasing their market share.

Octopus Energy and Affect Energy:

In August 2018, Octopus Energy acquired small provider Affect Energy. This gave them over 20,000 new customers who were placed on the Flexible Octopus tariff.

Octopus Energy and M&S Energy:

In July 2018, Octopus partnered with M&S Energy. This means that M&S Energy customers are supplied with Octopus Energy’s 100% green energy, while still using M&S customer services.

On top of these two partnerships and acquisitions, Octopus have also acquired ENGIE UK and partnered with Co-Op Energy.

Octopus Energy App

On the Octopus Energy App, you can manage your account from your phone, allowing you to perform tasks such as telling Octopus that you are moving house, as well as send meter readings to Octopus.

You can also spin the ‘Wheel of Fortune’, when you submit meter readings, where you can win prizes and credit for your energy bill worth up to £512.

Customer Service

With an ‘Excellent’ five-star review on Trustpilot, Octopus Energy consistently rank as one of the highest scoring energy suppliers for customer satisfaction.

A big part of this comes from its excellent customer service team, and the average wait time for a customer to reach a customer service assistant on the phone was a whopping two minutes in the last year.

You can also get in touch via email, and Which? found that emails were usually responded to on average in 1 hour and 23 minutes, which was the fastest response time of any supplier.

How do Octopus Energy customers rate their supplier?

Ratings given are out of ten. Blue highlights indicate the best performance in the relevant category out of ten suppliers whose customers were surveyed.

	Value for Money	Customer Service	Complaints Handling	Bill Accuracy	Would Recommend	Overall
	8.3	8.4	8.2	8.6	95%	8.6

*Based on a survey of 42 Octopus Energy customers conducted Feb-Mar 2019