Our wind turbine antics, explained

At the beginning of this year, two wind turbines joined the Octopus Energy family (the first of many, we hope). You might’ve noticed we’ve been having a lot of fun with them ever since.

In May, we sent intrepid YouTuber Tom Scott up our #1 Fan to give a fascinating look at the inner workings of a turbine – and then abseil down the side from the emergency escape hatch.

The stunt amassed over 3.5 million views.

Then, we rallied Owen Lane and Ellis Jenkins from our fave rugby team, Cardiff Rugby, for some blindfolded sky-high tries from the top of our turbine:

More recently we worked with the local school, Deri Primary, to educate young kids about renewable energy: holding a super special competition for the kids to create a sign for our #2 Fan, and a green energy lesson at the bottom of the turbine with scientist Boffin John:

Next, we visited Market Weighton, Yorkshire, the home of our #1 Fan to have an afternoon with the children of St. Mary’s Primary School. We taught them all about why local green power is so great, read them through our kids' book Going green with Constantine, and even worked together to build solar powered cars and wind turbines for the classroom. They’re also going to be helping us design the sign for #1 Fan so watch this space as we enter Spring this year.

And we’ve created incredible light projections on our turbines in the dead of the night to celebrate Yorkshire Day and then make our turbine into England's Biggest Fan for the Euros 2020 final.

Why do we do all this?

We want to show all people across the UK, whether they're die-hard sports fans or young kids, that having green power in your neighbourhood is a genuinely good thing. Not just good for the planet at large, but for your own community: bringing cheaper energy as well as local jobs, education, even national celebration, art and performance.

The world’s adopting green energy fast — with whole cities and countries now getting their power from 100% clean, renewable sources, and more countries, including ours, getting greener every year.

Already, more than 40%+ of the UK’s power is renewable, and we’re working on tech that’ll help us make the most of the clean energy we have: using more when the wind’s blowing and the sun’s shining, and saving it up to use when it’s not. But that still won’t be enough. We need loads more wind turbines and solar panels in the UK to help us reach 100% green.

‘NIMBYism’ has long been a big part of the pushback against green energy: people’s concern that having a turbine in their town might negatively impact their lives. ‘Not In My Back Yard’ cries aren’t always genuine: sometimes, they’re stoked by entities with a vested interest in maintaining our gas guzzling status quo. But sometimes the fear comes from someone with the best intentions who’s genuinely worried, and we want to help show them that green generation isn’t just ‘not a nuisance’, but can actively benefit them.

We started the Octopus Energy Fan Club, with our wind turbines in Caerphilly, Wales and South Yorkshire. When the wind blows and the turbines spin, people who live nearest the turbines can receive a 20% discount on their electricity costs. When the wind really picks up, they get up to 50% off.

We've seen a massively exciting result from this already: Fan Club customers are typically saving a third of their bill, simply by changing when they use energy to line up with when their local Fan is spinning. One of our customers James even spoke to The Telegraph about the savings he's made since joining Fan Club.

And we’ve developed Outgoing Octopus, a tariff that pays people to share their home solar power with the grid when the UK needs it most. These past few weeks, while the grid’s been under severe strain due to a global gas shortage, we’ve been paying people up to 2000% the standard price to export their solar or stored battery energy: rewarding micro-generators for sharing green power locally.