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With energy prices sky high, it's never been more important to help people save power and money. But Saving Sessions isn't just a way of easing the impact of the energy crisis on your bills - it's the start of a new era of energy: one where people genuinely benefit by actively participating in making energy smarter, greener and cheaper.

Currently, the UK often has to fire up extra dirty coal and gas stations to satisfy everyone's energy needs at the busiest times of day.

Rather than paying these (very expensive) fossil fuel generators to turn on, when demand is high, we want to reward people for switching off or delaying the energy they don't need. Not only will this cut carbon emissions - it helps balance the energy system, and allows us to make the most of green energy when the sun's shining and the wind's blowing.

You'll earn rewards for every unit of electricity (in kilowatt hours) you don't use compared to normal. There'll be at least 12 Saving Sessions this winter (but likely many more), and they'll be between one and four hours long.

It's hard to say exactly how much you could earn overall, because it all depends on a lot of factors we can't totally predict: from how many Sessions there'll be to how long each one is to how much National Grid will pay in each Session.

Plus, there are individual factors, like how many you choose to get involved in, and how much power you're able to save in each one.

A lot of the unknowns exist because this project is designed to help balance the energy grid, and we don't know exactly how much help it'll need this winter - as that depends on stuff like the weather, energy demand and supply issues (for example, particular generators not running.)

If you managed to take part in all 12 Sessions and you saved 1 kilowatt hour on average per Session, we'd expect your OctoPoint rewards to be worth around £36. However, it's really likely there'll be many more than 12 Sessions. Based on previous years, we're expecting around 1 or 2 Sessions per week, so around 25 in total - if that happened, with a slightly higher average incentive, you could end up earning OctoPoint rewards worth around £100.

OctoPoints are our way of rewarding Octopus Energy customers. You'll be able to keep track of how many you have in your online account, and they can be redeemed for all sorts of different rewards - prizes, donations to our Octo Assist fund for customers in need, or credit on your Octopus account (in GBP).

We'll give you more info about OctoPoints once Saving Sessions kicks off.

Saving Sessions is entirely free to get involved, your tariff and energy payments won't change, and you can opt out any time.

Just request one on our website and we'll email you when we have appointments free.

Saving Sessions sign-ups will be open throughout Winter, so once your smart meter has been installed and we have received a couple of weeks of data, you’ll be able to take part.

We're installing around 40,000 smart meters a month, and can generally install one for you within a few weeks. But it depends on engineer availability, and a few other factors, so we can't absolutely guarantee when it'll happen.

Smart meters work great in most homes, but there are some areas where signal doesn't reach just yet, and some types of homes where smart meters can have trouble connecting.