As the summer heatwave drives up national energy demand alongside unexpected generation outages, Octopus Energy’s customer base is proving a flexible grid is a better grid, with millions of connected customers, devices and tariffs helping to ease the supply and demand margin.
Firstly, Octopus has announced its second Saving Session of the week, where 1.2 million customers can choose to reduce their energy usage between 19:30-20:30 in exchange for 415 OctoPoints (52p) per kilowatt hour (kWh) turned down, making money by using less.
Secondly, Octopus customers will provide up to 4.5 gigawatt hours (GWh) of demand shifting to the grid through its network of 440,000 connected devices like home batteries and electric vehicles, and use of other smart tariffs.
The urgency follows intense heatwave conditions across the UK, which have triggered high residential cooling demand alongside a series of conventional power plant outages (CCGT), tightening the margins between energy demand and energy supply significantly.
Yesterday’s preliminary Saving Session already saw tremendous engagement, with 528,213 customers opted in to receive 196 octopoints/kWh. Tonight’s high-incentive event is expected to smash previous summer participation records.
Thanks to smart tariffs incentivising (and often automatically) moving home energy usage outside of the peak electricity period, customers signed up to tariffs like Intelligent Octopus Go, Intelligent Octopus Flux, and Octopus Agile will be helping out the grid – without having to change their behaviour in any way today.
The flexibility of British households is increasingly helping energy costs during extreme weather events. While Saving Sessions were originally conceived as a winter grid-balancing tool during the height of the energy crisis, their adoption during summer peaks has accelerated.
In the entire summer period of 2025 (April to October), Octopus conducted 8 turn-down sessions. Including tonight’s event, Octopus has already executed 6 summer sessions since April 2026 alone, demonstrating a clear structural shift in how summer demand is managed.
To date, Octopus Energy has paid out nearly £6 million (£5.9m) to its customers via the Saving Sessions program. While customers on smart tariffs have saved a whopping £1 billion by moving their energy around to when it suits the grid.
Greg Jackson, Founder and CEO of Octopus Energy Group, said: “Our customers are proving that a modern, flexible green grid is happening right now. Faced with a heatwave and unexpected grid constraints, over a million British homes are happy to shift their usage, and move their charging to different times, and get paid for doing so. With market reform like zonal pricing, and more use of this flexibility we could largely eliminate these periodic grid issues far more cheaply than relentlessly building new infrastructure.”