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

In a May 2026 customer update, Octopus Energy said more chances to use free or cheaper electricity were expected, 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 can be useful. Here is what is happening and how to think about it.

What is changing

In recent years, Octopus customers have seen a few related schemes:

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

As of May 2026, Octopus said Britain's grid operator was expanding this through the Demand Flexibility Service, and Octopus customers would be able to take part through Octoplus Saving Sessions. Its public Saving Sessions page explained 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. You might run the dishwasher, charge the car, fill the battery, or put the heating on a bit harder if the session terms and your setup make that sensible.
• 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. In that May 2026 update, Octopus said signed-up Octoplus Saving Sessions customers did not need to do anything yet and it would share more detail before the new sessions start.

Why is the country doing this?

In its May 2026 messaging, Octopus told customers that Britain spent £1.5 billion in 2025 switching off wind turbines and switching on gas instead, 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.

As of early May 2026, Octopus said its customers had 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 said that in 2025 customers had 15 sessions and 19 hours of free electricity. These figures can change, but the pattern is clear: the windows can be 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, can make the windows more useful — but only if something is watching the windows and helping the home act at the right time.

How a home battery can turn sessions into practical value

If you have a home battery, a Power Up window may be a chance to fill the battery from the grid at a low effective cost, and a Power Down window may be a chance to run more of your home from the battery instead of the grid while demand is high. The result depends on the session terms, your baseline, your battery size, charge rate, export rules and control setup.

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, closer to full depending on battery size, charge rate and limits.
• 5pm to 6:30pm: a Power Down window is announced. Your battery helps power the home, reducing grid import, and Octopus may credit your account if you opted in and beat the session baseline.

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 supported controls, the home can be readier before the window starts instead of relying only 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 for supported homes, reducing the need to jump between supplier, inverter, and charger apps.

For supported Solis, Octopus, and Zappi homes where the customer enables automation and the required tariff, slot and control evidence is available, 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 to reduce the manual checking where the home and tariff setup support it.

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 may credit you based on how much less you used compared to your normal pattern, if you opt in and meet the session rules.

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, or pre-heat the home in winter. A heat pump with its own smart scheduling can also benefit, because it may be able to store cheap heat in 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 may get the most out of this are the people whose supported home can respond reliably without constant manual checking.

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

At publication in May 2026, Octopus's referral programme showed £50 in account credit for both the new customer and referrer when someone joined through a referral link. Octopus can change referral amounts, eligibility and terms, so check the live offer before switching.

Here is ours if you want to use it:

Check the current Octopus referral offer →

Disclosure: the link above is an Octopus referral link. If you switch through it, Octopus may credit your account and ours according to the referral terms in force at the time. It costs you nothing extra, but check Octopus's current tariff, referral and eligibility terms before switching. This is not a sponsored post.

The bottom line

Some customers are being paid to use clean energy when it is plentiful and to ease off when it is scarce. That is useful, and it is the direction the UK grid is heading.

For homes with a battery, an EV, or a heat pump, the windows may 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 supported Solis battery, you can connect it to 1app.energy so your battery, tariff, and charger data sit in one place — our SolisCloud setup guide explains sign-in and the manual fallback. 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.