Saving Sessions FAQs

The energy grid is a constant balancing act. To keep the system running smoothly, the National Energy System Operator (NESO) looks ahead to make sure electricity supply and demand perfectly match every second of the day.

To do this, the grid often has to pay for expensive, last-minute tweaks to supply (often firing up fossil fuel power generators). Saving Sessions offers a smarter, more cost-effective alternative: adjusting demand instead. By changing when we use electricity, we can help balance things out when the system needs it most. And the best part is: you get rewarded for your help!

If you're part of Octoplus but haven't signed up to Saving Sessions yet, log in to your online account or app – you should see a banner with an option to join the campaign.

Once you've done that, you'll start receiving emails to join each session. Remember to opt in to each session otherwise you won't receive Octopoints for taking part.

We’ll invite you to every Power Up or Power Down session you’re able to join.

While we always aim to give you plenty of notice (between 2-6 hours before the event), occasionally you might get less for Power Ups. We get the green light from the network operator in the morning and events can happen any time in the afternoon or evening, depending on if it’s a Power Up or Power Down.

Remember: You’ll need to opt in by clicking the button on your email or web dashboard before the session starts. If you opt in after you won't get the rewards for using less power.

To earn Octopoints, you have to opt into a Session before it begins, so we know you’re planning to take part. If you don’t opt in, you won’t earn any points, even if you do take part. You can always take part in future Sessions, though.

As long as you’re subscribed to our comms, you’ll receive an email invitation to opt into every Saving Session — sent with as much notice as we can. We aim to add your results to your Saving Session dashboard within 14 days.

Saving Sessions is just for electricity.

It’s hard to say for sure — the total number will largely depend on how much help the service operator needs at any given time, but we're hoping for lots!

You don’t have to join any, if you don’t want to. But if you do want to take part, you can join as many as you like. There’s no pressure to join if it’s not convenient for you or if you don’t think it would be of value.

If you decide not to take part, just don’t opt in when we email you about the next Session. We won’t send any reminders or follow-ups about that Session but you’ll still get an invite to the next one.

Login to your online account (in your browser, not the app). Go to the Octoplus tab and scroll to the bottom. There is an opt-out link there that you can tap and we will remove you within 2 weeks.

If you ask to opt out after participating in a session, but your reward has not been paid out yet, you may not receive that reward.

Power Down sessions usually happen in the evening and often at peak times (between 4-7pm) because that's when energy demand is typically highest. The specific windows will be based on when the grid needs help, so we don't know exactly when they’ll be yet (in other words, we can't schedule them far in advance).

We’ll look at your historical smart meter data leading up to a Session, and calculate what you usually use at that time of day on average.

If the Session is on a weekday, we’ll look at your half-hourly usage over the last 10 weekdays (excluding Saving Session days and bank holidays). If the Session is on a weekend or bank holiday, we’ll look at your half hourly usage over the last 4 weekend days. We then use these half-hourly averages as a benchmark – so you’ll earn points for every kilowatt hour you save compared to that number during the session (or use above that, for Power Ups).

If you have solar or a battery, we’ll count your export as part of your typical energy use and reward you based on your net energy change across your combined import and export.

We’re always comparing you to what you’d have normally used at the time of the Saving Session, so if you’re generally a low energy user around the time of the most recent session, it’ll be a bit harder for you to make bigger savings on Power Downs.

If your savings still don’t look quite enough based on what you’ve used in the past, it might be down to the way we have to calculate your energy saving.

First, we need to work out your ‘normal energy use’ at the time of each Saving Session - so we can then compare it to what you use during the Session to work out your reward. There’s a strict formula we have to follow, set by NESO.

NESO funds the reward for reducing power at certain times. They’ve arrived at the reward rate because that’s the sort of amount they pay a bigger power plant to turn on or off to help balance the grid if there’s too much or little demand.

NESO’s project rewards people per kilowatt hour they save in Power Downs. The more you use normally, the more you can reduce and the more you stand to earn. This isn’t something we can change – it’s the whole point of the project, helping the grid reduce megawatt hours of energy demand so they don’t have to find that same amount of generation from more expensive fossil fuels later in the day.

Beyond whatever you manage to earn, and our different bonuses and prizes, your efforts are part of something bigger. Our Sessions are making a huge difference on the grid: sometimes saving as much power as all the homes in Cardiff switching off. That’s all power the UK doesn’t have to generate, saving an enormous amount of fossil fuel emissions and making everyone’s energy a bit cheaper by reducing the need for the grid to burn gas last minute at a massive premium.

There's no need to get involved if you feel Power Downs aren't right for you. But this is quite different to just saving energy all the time in everyday life – it’s about shifting your electricity-intensive activities to different times of day – like cooking dinner earlier than usual, or scheduling your dishwasher outside of the session hours. Any reduction in your usual usage, however small, will result in you earning a bit of reward.

We work out your savings based on your normal energy use for the past 10 weekdays (excluding holidays or previous saving session days).

Even if you switch off the exact same stuff during each session, the benchmark will be a bit different every time depending on your recent energy habits – so you’ll see slightly different results.The rate you’re paid can also change from session to session. We’ll always tell you what you stand to earn on your invite notification and on the website where you opt in.

It’s got to do with the fact that we measure each half an hour of the Saving Session separately. Over an hour-long Power Up, let’s say you cut your energy usage in the first half hour, but then used so much energy in the second half hour that overall, you still ended up using more power than usual. In this case, you’d still earn Octopoints for the energy saved in the first half an hour, even if you didn't save overall.

Power Up sessions usually happen in the day because that's when there's tons of green energy in the wires that needs soaking up. They typically happen when energy demand is low (sometimes in the middle of the work day, or overnight) because that's when there's a surplus of green power. They’ll happen on the weekend from time to time too! The specific windows are based on when the grid has an abundance of excess power, so we don't know exactly when they’ll be far in advance.

If it's a Power Up session, it means there's plenty of renewable energy in the wires – so charge up, plug in your devices and use more electricity to maximise your rewards. Do the vacuuming, turn the dishwasher or washing machine on, make lunch (or an early dinner), charge your EV, run your heat pump or immersion heater, basically whatever it takes to get those Octopoints.

There are no limits on how much extra electricity you can use to earn rewards. But of course, it's your responsibility to use electricity safely and carefully at home – for example, don't use so much on a single extension cable that you overload it, and make sure you don't overload your circuit breaker.

Just like our Power Down sessions, we look at your historical smart meter data leading up to a Session to calculate what you usually use at that time of day, on average (using your past 10 weekdays or past 4 weekend days).

You’ll earn Octopoints for every kilowatt hour you use above that normal benchmark during the Session. Your normal baseline energy usage is billed at your standard tariff rate, but the extra energy you consume is rewarded back to you in Octopoints. 

Yes! As long as your smart meter itself is working, you can join. Your smart meter is the unit attached to the wall, usually in a cupboard under the stairs.

The in-home display is different to your smart meter – it's the little screen that's usually plugged in and sits on a bench somewhere in the house showing your energy usage info.

You can join Saving Sessions even if your screen doesn't work, or you don't have one.

You’ll need a working electric smart meter so we can verify how much energy you’ve managed to save.

If you haven't got one, you can request one on our website.

We can generally install a smart meter in a few weeks (depending on engineer availability) but we can't absolutely guarantee it. Smart meters work great in most homes, but there are some areas where signal doesn't reach, and some types of homes where they'll have trouble connecting.

Saving Sessions sign-ups will be open all year, so once your smart meter has been installed and we have received a couple of weeks of data, you should be eligible to take part.

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

We're installing around 80,000 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.

Very occasionally, external issues like data outages or connection interruptions mean we might not be able to retrieve readings from your smart meter during a Session you opted into. If that happens, we won’t know how much energy you saved (Power Down) or how much extra you used (Power Up). Instead, we'll credit you the average number of redeemable points that other customers received for that Session, based on the assumption you got involved.

If we stop getting regular meter readings from your smart meter, that might mean you're not eligible for Saving Sessions anymore (we need 80% of all half-hourly readings for the last 15 days for you to be eligible). You won't be able to opt in and earn money in Sessions anymore.

If you sign up to Saving Sessions and your smart meter stops connecting, please get in touch with us and we'll do all we can to get it working again.

Though rare, some problems can be very tricky to fix – we're dependent on a whole host of third party government-mandated systems to make smart meters work, so sometimes it's outside of our control. We'll do our best to keep your meter connected but we can't guarantee it.

We usually receive 48 automatic readings from your smart meter every day: one every half hour.

Occasionally, your meter might miss a reading during a Saving Session. This doesn't mean your meter is disconnected. It usually just means a brief outage happened at exactly the same time the session happened. This can be caused by:

• A split-second power hiccup on your meter setup.

• A temporary network drop (called WAN), which works just like when your home Wi-Fi drops out for a second and reconnects.

  
  

If we can't get your exact reading for a session, we'll reward you with the average earnings for that session instead. We think this is the fairest way to do things, and you might even get more than you would have done with real readings.

• Do you have a smart electricity meter? Check what type of meter you have in the meter section on your dashboard (it should say ‘Smart’ next to meter type). If you don’t have one yet, you can request a smart meter now.

  
  

• Is your smart meter opted in to send us half-hourly readings? We need half hourly readings to measure your performance – you can opt in to half-hourly readings on your dashboard by clicking ‘Review my smart meter data preferences’. After that, we'll need to take half-hourly readings from your meter for 15 days to build up a picture of your typical energy use.

  
  

• Is your smart meter connected to us? Check under Explore my energy use on your dashboard. If there aren’t any recent readings there, it suggests your smart meter’s not connected to us.

  
  

• Is your smart meter sending us readings reliably? We need to have received 80% of your half hourly readings in the past 15 days. Check the graph on Explore my energy use – if there are gaps in your readings, it might mean your smart meter connection is patchy. Our checks refresh every day so if your smart meter starts sending readings regularly enough, you’ll be able to sign up for Saving Sessions as normal.