Octopus Power Up & Power Down: what it means for UK homes

Octopus Energy emailed customers with a useful update: more chances to use free or super-cheap electricity are expected this summer, alongside more chances to get rewarded for easing off during busy grid periods.

If you have a home battery, an electric car, or even a heat pump, this is genuinely good news. Here is what is happening, in plain English, and how to make the most of it.

What is changing

Until now, Octopus customers have seen a few related schemes:

• Saving Sessions — short windows where you got paid to use less electricity (typically early evenings, when the grid is under strain).
• Free Electricity sessions — short windows where Octopus customers got electricity for free, usually when there was loads of wind and solar and not enough demand to use it.

Octopus says Britain's grid operator is expanding this through the Demand Flexibility Service, and Octopus customers will be able to take part through Octoplus Saving Sessions. Its public Saving Sessions page now explains the idea around two actions: Power Up and Power Down.

• Power Up = "use energy now, it may be free or cheaper." These are the windows when there is too much green electricity in the system and not enough homes using it. Run the dishwasher, charge the car, fill the battery, put the heating on a bit harder.
• Power Down = "ease off if you can, we will pay you for it." These are the busy hours when everyone is cooking dinner, the wind has dropped, and the grid is leaning on expensive gas power stations.

Some sessions can be national and some can be regional, depending on where the grid needs help. The important bit is the direction of travel: homes are increasingly being rewarded for shifting demand, not just for using less overall. If you are already signed up to Octoplus Saving Sessions, Octopus says you do not need to do anything yet and it will share more detail before the new sessions start.

Why is the country doing this?

Octopus has told customers that Britain spent £1.5 billion last year switching off wind turbines and switching on gas instead, simply because the grid did not have enough demand in the right places at the right times to soak up all the wind power. The fix is to give people a reason to use that spare clean power instead of throwing it away.

Octopus says its customers have already earned £5.8 million through Saving Sessions and unlocked £4.6 million worth of free power through Free Electricity sessions. Its Free Electricity page also shows how quickly this adds up: in 2025, Octopus says customers had 15 sessions and 19 hours of free electricity. The exact numbers will keep changing, but the pattern is clear: the windows are valuable for people who can actually catch them.

The point is not one headline figure. The point is that flexibility is becoming a real household asset.

The honest catch

Power Up and Power Down sessions are usually short — often one or two hours — and they get announced with not much notice. They land at times that suit the grid, not your diary:

• A Power Up window might fall on a Tuesday lunchtime, or 3pm on a Sunday, or 11pm on a windy Thursday.
• A Power Down window might be 5pm to 6:30pm on a freezing weekday.

Most people are at work, picking the kids up, cooking, or asleep when these windows happen. Even if you really want to take part, it is hard to catch them by hand — especially Power Up windows, which go to waste unless something in your home is ready to fill up.

There is also a practical admin point: these sessions usually require you to opt in through Octopus or Octoplus before the event. Automation can help your home respond, but you still need to accept the session terms inside Octopus when required.

This is where having a home battery, an EV charger, or both, changes the game completely — but only if something is watching the windows and helping the home act at the right time.

How a home battery turns Power Up and Power Down into real money

If you have a home battery, every Power Up window is a chance to fill the battery from the grid at a very low effective cost, and every Power Down window is a chance to run your home off the battery instead of the grid while demand is high.

Imagine a typical Tuesday:

• 1pm: Octopus announces a Power Up window for 2pm to 3pm because the wind is strong and the country is not using enough.
• 2pm: your battery starts filling from the grid while the session is active.
• 3pm: it stops, fully charged.
• 5pm to 6:30pm: a Power Down window is announced. Your battery powers the home, you pull almost nothing from the grid, and Octopus credits your account.

Done by hand, that means watching your phone, opening the SolisCloud or manufacturer app, changing the schedule, remembering to change it back. Most people will not do this every day. Most people will miss most of the windows. (We have written about this exact problem in why Octopus Intelligent Go can quietly drain your home battery — the same logic applies to Power Up and Power Down windows.)

Done with the right controls, the home is ready before the window starts instead of relying on you to remember.

How 1app.energy fits in

This is exactly the kind of problem 1app.energy is built around: tariff-aware battery and EV coordination, without making the customer jump between supplier, inverter, and charger apps.

For supported Solis, Octopus, and Zappi homes, the useful pattern is:

• Know the tariff window before the home starts using expensive energy.
• Keep battery and EV charging from fighting each other during cheap or smart-charging periods.
• Use the battery at the right time instead of letting it empty into the wrong load.
• Keep the customer informed when a provider connection or required data is missing.

If you are not sure which 1app mode is right for your home, the smart control mode guide walks through the options.

If you are not on Octopus — say you are with British Gas, EDF, OVO, E.ON, or anyone else — the same principle still matters. A battery is only as smart as the schedule and tariff context it is given. (For a longer breakdown of how the main Octopus tariffs compare for battery homes, see Octopus Agile vs Go for a home battery.)

In other words: the windows reward people who are paying attention. The point of automation is that you do not have to.

What if I do not have a battery yet?

You can still take part in Power Down windows by manually using less during the alert — turn off the dryer, push the dishwasher run to later, hold off on the kettle. Octopus will credit you based on how much less you used compared to your normal pattern.

For Power Up windows without a battery, the things you can do are limited but real: run a wash, charge laptops and phones, run the EV charger if you happen to be home, pre-heat the home in winter. A heat pump with smart scheduling is also a great Power Up beneficiary, because it can dump cheap heat into the floor or hot water tank when the grid wants you to use power. (For homes already running heat pump + battery + EV together, see why a smart tariff alone is not enough.)

But the people who will get the most out of this are the people whose home automatically responds without them having to remember.

A small heads-up if you are thinking about switching to Octopus

Octopus runs a referral programme where, if you join through someone's referral link, both of you get £50 in account credit. If you have been thinking about switching anyway, using a referral can be a sensible way to get the credit.

Here is ours if you want to use it:

Switch to Octopus and we both get £50 →

Disclosure: the link above is an Octopus referral link. If you switch through it, Octopus may credit £50 to your account and £50 to ours. It costs you nothing extra, and the tariffs and service you get from Octopus are the same as if you signed up directly. This is not a sponsored post.

The bottom line

The country is finally being paid to use clean energy when it is plentiful and to ease off when it is scarce. That is genuinely good news, and it is the direction the whole UK grid is heading.

For homes with a battery, an EV, or a heat pump, the windows can quietly add up over a year — but only if the home is ready to respond. Catching them by hand is unrealistic for most people.

If you already have a Solis battery, you can connect it to 1app.energy so your battery, tariff, and charger data sit in one place — our SolisCloud API key guide walks you through the connection. If you are still planning your install, the three new Solis batteries launching in the UK are a good place to start.

The grid is changing. Your home can change with it.