![]() ![]() Your musical tastes cemented back then, and hearing a tune you like helps chill you out. When lines are busy, if Octopus has your date of birth on file, it will play the No. I don’t have to submit meter readings anymore, as the info automatically uploads to Octopus, but the company still allows me a monthly wheel of fortune spin. It was installed for free and came with a wireless display that shows my energy use for electricity and gas. Dibb-Simkin told me that it doesn’t just make billing more accurate, it also allows more efficient balancing of the power grid by providing insight into real-time usage.Ī few months after joining Octopus, I got a smart meter. ![]() This gamification of meter readings is a clever way to encourage folks to submit them more often. Submit a meter reading every month and you earn a spin of the wheel of fortune, where you can win prizes from £1 up to £512. With Octopus, you can submit a meter reading as often as you like, which means accurate billing based on your actual usage. It may seem like a low bar, but all my previous suppliers had clunky systems offering limited data, not to mention frequent downtime and data breaches. ![]() When I first logged on to Octopus' website, I could see my energy use and bills at a glance or submit a meter reading. Even after the now expired Scottish government subsidy of up to £7,500, that is four times the cost of a new gas boiler installation. To give you an idea, I got a quote to install an ASHP last year that came in at almost £18,000. Although the technology is widely used around the world, it is prohibitively expensive here. It is crucial that major players step in to make this kind of switch affordable for folks in the UK. Octopus will also remove your line and meter and cap your gas for free if you ask. Octopus CMO Rebecca Dibb-Simkin says the aim is to bring pricing, with the help of the UK government’s Boiler Upgrade Scheme, which offers up to £5,000 ($5,760) toward an ASHP, in line with the typical £3,500 cost of a gas boiler replacement. Octopus has a research center with two full-size houses inside a warehouse, where teams of engineers have been practicing heat pump installation. (More than 20,000 people have already registered an interest.) As gas prices soar, Octopus has launched an air-source heat pump (ASHP) scheme to encourage folks to switch from gas. Most homes in the UK currently rely on gas-fueled central heating, but with the alarming impact of climate change and the finite nature of fossil fuels, we should be switching to heat pumps. It boasts a slick app and website, fair and transparent pricing, and helpful customer service. It even seems to have something of a conscience. The company is committed to green energy and just announced a €220 million ($220 million) fund to develop renewables and reduce Europe's reliance on gas. Octopus has impressed me repeatedly since I joined just over two years ago. I didn’t realize how far my expectations had fallen until I switched. Reliance on fossil fuels, routine overcharging, confusing pricing, billing errors, dated systems, and terrible customer service were universal. My experience with energy suppliers in the United Kingdom for the past two decades has been depressing. The commitment to drive this kind of change attracted me to Octopus Energy. With sea levels rising, wildfires raging, and prolonged droughts leading to floods, we are increasingly asking, what can keep climate change from becoming catastrophic? A shift away from fossil fuels has long been an obvious answer, and yet change has been slow. ![]()
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