Welcome to the smart home – how does yours compare?
Ready to explore a tech-filled home that’s comfortable to live in and saves money on your bills? Take an interactive tour to see what you could achieve
Ah, autumn. A time of falling leaves, pumpkin latte obsessions, dubious Halloween outfits and … rising energy bills. With gas and electricity prices having gone up by 4% recently, higher energy costs sadly remain an all-too-common concern.
Take Paul*, from Warwickshire, an Octopus Energy customer who began transforming his four-bed semi into a smart home six years ago. Investing in solar panels, a battery and heat pump has led to substantial cost savings. “Last year my electric bills were only £363,” he says.
Some Octopus customers make money selling solar-generated energy back to the grid. Others can have no bills at all, thanks to tariffs such as Octopus Zero Bills (this is available to customers with well insulated homes fitted with solar panels, a heat pump and home battery – subject to fair usage and excluding EV charging).
From solar on the roof to the electric vehicle (EV) charger on the drive, join our tour to discover what your home could look like if it was powering – and possibly even paying for – itself …
Solar panels
Everybody loves the sunshine. Especially homeowners with solar panels who can capture so much electricity from their rooftop rays that they are able to sell surplus energy back to the grid.
Phil Steele, future technologies evangelist at Octopus Energy, estimates his family receives about £400-£500 in credit from the excess energy generated by the 12 panels on their four-bedroom home.
By pairing solar with a battery (see below), customers can store energy, then export it when prices are higher, usually from 4-7pm. Smart tariffs such as Octopus Flux can help here – customers can charge their battery using either solar power or overnight off peak rates and then export surplus to the grid when rates peak.
Installation tends to be straightforward, too. When Paul bought his initial 12 solar panels, Octopus engineers installed them in just one day, taking care of paperwork and surveys. Clearly impressed by the savings, he added another nine panels last year.
It looks as if the UK’s streets could soon be lined with more of these energy savers: solar panel installations are at a 15-year high. And thanks to ever-smaller tech and new legislation, plug-in panels are making solar more accessible than ever. Happy harvesting!
Heat pumps
The boiler. Is there an uglier word in the English language? Or a less attractive appliance? Fortunately, these gas-guzzling steel cans might be heading towards extinction, usurped by their sleeker, more sustainable cousin: the heat pump.
Nearly 125,000 heat pumps were sold in the UK last year, more than double the number in 2023, and 98,000 of them were air source heat pumps. Philip and Henriette, from Oxfordshire, are among those who’ve made the leap. They’d been thinking about making the switch for some time and the breakdown of their gas boiler gave them the push they needed. “Our house is 10 years old and well-insulated, so I knew it would be well suited for a heat pump,” says Philip.
To keep costs down, he was able to take advantage of the government’s Boiler Upgrade Scheme. It offers grants of up to £7,500 to help eligible households make the switch from gas (or £9,000 if you use oil or LPG).
Air source heat pumps are roughly three to four times more efficient than gas boilers and can potentially cut household bills if you sign up for an off peak tariff such as Cosy Octopus. Octopus reports that customers on its Cosy tariff save an average of £224 a year compared with heating their home with gas. On top of that, heat pumps can cut your carbon emissions by up to 70%, according to government figures, particularly if your electricity supply is from renewable sources.
How do air source heat pumps work? Unlike gas boilers, which burn fuel, heat pumps take heat from the air outside, and use electricity very efficiently to power a process that warms up water for radiators and taps. They even work when the temperature is well below freezing.
“You think: ‘Hang on, that’s not possible.’” says Steele. “Yet it is. It seems almost magical. You can get three, maybe even five, times as much energy out of them as you put in.”
Even better, heat pumps are expected to last about 20 years, says the Energy Saving Trust – five years longer than the average gas boiler.
Octopus doesn’t just supply the electricity to power heat pumps, it has its very own Octopus Cosy heat pump that it installs for customers. “It’s designed to be cute and cuddly,” says Steele. “It’s got a soft, rounded finish and a happy pink octopus smile that makes it much nicer than the bland white biscuit tins of gas boilers.”
Home battery
The secret weapon of any smart home. Depending on its size, this workhorse can tuck neatly into a garage or be attached to an outside wall, storing electricity from solar panels or being topped up with power from the grid when it’s at its cheapest.
The result? According to Octopus Energy, if you have a battery and solar working together and use a smart export tariff, you’re creating and storing your own green electricity, so you’re importing less, and you can even earn money by exporting excess energy back to grid, saving on your electricity bills.
Home batteries can charge when energy is most affordable, usually overnight while everyone’s in bed. Those stored electrons can be used during the day, so you avoid paying the more expensive day rate for electricity and, particularly, the evening peak rate. At a time when your household is in full electricity-maxxing mode, with the oven, air-fryer and dishwasher all going at once, you could pay less by using electricity you’ve already banked.
The battery really earns its stripes during power cuts. When Paul experienced one, his Tesla home battery “kicked in within milliseconds – everybody in our street couldn’t understand why our lights were on, and theirs weren’t!”.
Excitingly, Octopus is launching its very own range of batteries early next year. The wall mounted Octopus Nook Colossus stashes 5kWh or 10kWh, and could make a savvy addition to a home. One Octopus customer is now “98% off-grid” thanks to his current battery, says Steele.
Meanwhile, the 2kWh Nook Cube, about the size of a shoebox, will be perfect for apartments or rental homes. Just plug it into a standard socket, download the Octopus app, and let the potential for energy-hoarding kick in …
The EV charger
If you have an electric vehicle (EV), or are considering getting one, it’s worth knowing that some of the biggest savings depend on how you charge it. Getting a home EV charger means you can top your car up overnight on super-low smart tariffs such as Intelligent Octopus Go. By scheduling your car to charge when electricity is cheapest – usually when demand is lower or there’s more renewable energy on the grid – you could access six hours of charging for just 8p/kWh. At this rate, the cost of driving 200 miles in an average EV comes in at £4 compared with £37.50 for an average car achieving 40mpg (with petrol costing £1.65 a litre).
Philip, from Oxfordshire, says: “Each night, we use the super-low night rate to charge our electric car, heat the water tank, run the washing machine and recharge our home battery. In this way we keep the use of expensive daytime electricity to a minimum. We even sell back to the grid during the evening peak in electricity export prices.”
David, from Derbyshire, bought an EV after having solar panels installed, and adds: “We have found everything very simple to use and monitor via the Octopus App.”
The Octopus Home Mini
AKA the nearest thing your home has to an energy detective. Think of it as the Mulder and Scully, or Sherlock Holmes, for your electricity supply, sniffing out sneaky invisible energy thieves that push up bills.
As Steele says: “The Octopus Home Mini lets customers see in real-time what their house is doing but also looks for ‘phantom loads’ using electricity when you least expect it. It gives you – and us – a better estimate of your electricity profile.”
The Home Mini will show you if a TV or games console is quietly guzzling electricity on standby. It can also show you just how much energy a tumble dryer or electric shower is using, making it crystal clear what it’s costing you.
A surprising energy vampire, according to Steele? Wifi extenders, especially if you have several.
Live energy data is streamed to the Home Mini every 10 seconds, so you always know exactly what you’re using and spending. Its tech is so ingenious that it can turn energy curmudgeons into fully-fledged kilowatt nerds.
As its name suggests, the Home Mini really is tiny, a dongle small enough to fit in your palm. What’s more, it’s made from recycled plastic. Best of all, for Octopus customers, this hi-tech sleuth is supplied free of charge. As in, it’ll cost you £0. Nada. Zilch.
The smart meter
It might not be the most glamorous of appliances, but the smart meter is the beating heart of the whole Octopus Energy smart home setup.
Without it, homes would be less connected, miss out on valuable savings and waste untold watts of energy.
The unsung brilliance of a smart meter goes something like this. Every half hour, these clever devices automatically track your energy usage and feed it back to your supplier so that you don’t need to lift a finger. This data unlocks smart time-of-use tariffs such as Intelligent Octopus Go or Cosy Octopus, helping households tap into cheaper off-peak rates.
Those cut-price charges can be hard-to-resist. “As soon as customers go on to a smart meter, I guarantee they’ll stay with it,” says Steele.
Smart meters’ real-time intelligence is a big change from what Steele calls the “traditional dumb meter”. Maybe it’s finally time to say farewell to crawling into cupboards to squint at the meter or heading out in the rain to take a reading. With a smart meter doing the number-crunching, manual readings and estimated bills could soon be a thing-of-the-past. Goodbye guesswork, hello smart home.
*Surname not being used at the request of Octopus
Find out how you could make your home a smart energy home at Octopus Energy