Octopus Energy cuts bills to £0 with no standing charges for 5 years | Personal Finance | Finance
Octopus Energy is offering a radical tariff which promises customers will pay nothing at all for their energy – not even standing charges. The energy supplier has a tariff called Octopus Zero Bills, which does what it sounds like and promises that customers will not pay anything for their energy for ‘at least’ five years.
The scheme is being run in tandem with housing developers. A house built with renewable energy items including solar panels, a heat pump, battery storage and electric heating, will qualify for the Octopus Zero Bills scheme, using the renewable energy sources on the property to power the home instead.
Heat pumps are powered by electricity and take air from outside before heating it and pushing it into the property. They are more expensive to buy than a boiler but there are various grant schemes to slash the cost of installing one. It is hoped that heat pumps will fully replace traditional fossil fuel boilers in the long term.
Solar panels combined with a battery will also pay for themselves in their lifetime, even without taking into account the Octopus offer.
Octopus said: “Wouldn’t it be lovely if you never had to pay an energy bill for your home again?
“Thanks to smart tech, clean energy and clever design, that dream is already a reality. All across the UK, hundreds of people are living in homes that do not just use less energy; they generate, store and manage their own. And the result is simple: no home energy bills.
“These are Octopus Zero Bills homes, where the average home is saving over £1,800 each year. And they are not prototypes or dreams from a distant future. They’re here and people are living in them today.”
Octopus added: “A Zero Bills home is a regular house with good insulation to make it energy-efficient, and it’s then fitted with solar panels, a heat pump, and a home battery. These technologies work together to power the home, and our tech platform, Kraken, manages it all to make sure the energy is used in the smartest way possible.
“When the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, the home can store clean, cheap energy in the battery. Later, when demand on the grid is high, that energy can be used in the home or even sold back to the grid.
“The result is a house that works for you and for the planet.”
Octopus says that residents ‘do not pay a penny’ for the energy their home uses and ‘there are no standing charges’. In fact, the only time you may need to pay is if you have an EV, which is billed separately with a ‘super low’ Intelligent Octopus Go rate.
The firm says it plans to build 100,000 zero-bills homes by 2030, adding: “The future is arriving fast and our aim is to make Zero Bills Homes the new normal. By working with developers, councils and innovators across the industry, we plan to build 100,000 Zero Bills homes by 2030.
“It is not too good to be true. It’s proof we can build a future where clean, affordable energy isn’t a luxury. It’s simply the standard.”
