We need customers to have a working smart meter so we can work out how much electricity you used in each Power Down session – and whether you managed to use less than usual.

We also need customers to have a smart meter so we can work out how much electricity you used in your Happy Hours. Once the data is in, we credit your account with exactly what you used during your free hour (capped at 16kWh, but don’t worry, that’s more than any regular home could use in an hour) which is what makes it free!

As long as you’re part of Saving Sessions, you’ll be signed up automatically and should see Happy Hours on your online dashboard.

To take part in Happy Hours, you’ll need to:

Yes, if you’re part of Octoplus and Saving Sessions, you can take part in Happy Hours too. When you use less electricity in a Power Down session you’ll earn a token that you can put towards a free Happy Hour.

We’ll email you to let you know about each Power Down session on the day, so look out for our email invites. To ensure you’re rewarded for your efforts and get a Weekend Happy Hour credit, you’ll need to click the button in the email to opt in.You can also opt in to Power Down sessions on your online Saving Sessions dashboard. A card will pop up at the top of your dashboard to let you know about the next session, with a button to accept the challenge and opt in. 

Once you’ve opted in, that’s it. Get ready to use less electricity during the session! Results will appear on your online dashboard within a few days.

For your Power Down session to count as successful and help you to unlock a Weekend Happy Hour, you need to use less electricity than you usually would in at least half an hour of the session.

What do we mean by ‘less than normal’?  In simple terms, we look at your historical energy usage to see the average amount of energy you tend to use at the time of the session. 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. 

If you use less energy in the first half of the Power Down session, but use the same or more in the second half, this will result in an unsuccessful session, and won’t count towards your Weekend Happy Hours.

Find out more about how we work out your baseline.

There aren’t as many Saving Sessions for Scottish customers – but we’ve cooked up a way to make sure you still get the opportunity to use Happy Hours in the weekend! Let us explain.

Saving Sessions are a tool used by the grid operator to keep supply and demand in balance. At times when the energy supply is super expensive (and polluting), customers get rewarded for using less. In Scotland it’s a little different: there’s so much wind power in Scotland that typically everyone’s energy use is covered, even at peak times. Since there’s no need for Scots to use less, Scotland is often left out of our Power Down challenges.

We don't want you to miss out on Weekend Happy Hours though, so we've decided to level the playing field.

If other regions have had the chance to earn a Weekend Happy Hour, we'll make sure Scottish homes get the chance too. 

We'll give you up to one token per week towards a Weekend Happy Hour.

Here's how this works:

Enjoy the free power and keep being green and fabulous, Scotland.

Yes! It's being extended until 14th February 2027, but it won't work in exactly the same way. Here's why:

Finding ways to keep the free power flowing in winter is hard. Energy demand for heat soars, and last-minute energy gets very pricey – made worse by the ongoing instability overseas.

We’ve been hard at work on a way to keep Happy Hours going through those high-price months, and we’ve landed on a token system.

How the Happy Hours token system works (from November 2)

We’re also adding more flexibility to your schedule

After November 1, look out for the odd Saturday session and booking windows outside the usual 11am-3pm slot. (Yup, we listened)

Will my current banked Happy Hours roll over?

Some of them will! Here is exactly how it works:

We credit you for the amount of electricity you use during your Happy Hour by looking at your half-hourly smart meter data. This credit is then applied to your account within 14 days, making it free.

We charge you as normal during the session (so we can check your smart meter to see how much energy you used) and then refund you, making the electricity free. We'll pop the money straight back on to your Octopus account within 14 days of the Happy Hour.

Every time you successfully reduce your electricity usage in a Power Down session, you’ll get 1 token towards a free Happy Hour.

Usually, when you have 2-3 tokens, this will be enough to unlock a free Happy Hour and you can then book your chosen weekend slot on your online dashboard.

If energy demand and prices are exceptionally high one weekend, occasionally you might need more tokens to unlock a slot. But we’ll do our best to keep it at the same ratio.

Just a heads up: results from your Power Down sessions take about three working days to land. Once confirmed, your token balance will update on your Saving Sessions dashboard, ready to use whenever you fancy.

Remember, your tokens will expire at 11.59pm on 14th February, so use them before you lose them.

Yes! You don’t have to use your Happy Hour tokens in the same week you unlocked them – you can save them up and use them another time instead.

Remember, this offer only lasts until 14th February 2027 (at 11.59pm, to be exact), so make sure you use up your tokens before then or you’ll lose ‘em.

The simple answer to this is: do nothing!

You don't have to do anything special to bank your Happy Hours. If you don't use them, they'll automatically get saved to your account, ready for you to use them at a more convenient time.

You can use up to two at a time. This offer was planned to end on 1 November 2026, but exciting news! It's being extended until 14 February (with rule changes).

Normally you can book up to two per weekend. But keep your eyes peeled for special Happy Hour weekends, where we sometimes double the number of hours you can book! 

Our standard Happy Hour times are 11-3pm on Sundays because this tends to be when energy is greenest and demand on the grid is lowest. But from 2nd November, we’re mixing things up a little bit with…

If energy demand and prices are exceptionally high one weekend, occasionally you might need more tokens to unlock a slot. Or, we may even need to skip a weekend. But we'll only do this if it's crucial.

Yep, it's capped at 16 kWh per hour. But don’t worry, that’s way more than a standard home could get through in 60 minutes. 

We’ll aim to update your online dashboard with results of each Power Down session in about 3 days (though sometimes it takes a little longer to get all the meter data).

This means any Power Down sessions you do from Monday to Wednesday should turn into tokens in time for that same weekend, but sessions from Thursday to Sunday will usually count towards the weekend after.

Check your online dashboard on Thursday to see time slots for the upcoming weekend and pick your slot.

We’ll aim to announce Happy Hour time slots on Thursdays for the coming weekend.

So that we don’t put too much pressure on the grid, we have a limited number of places available for each time slot. Because of that, it’s worth hopping onto your dashboard on Thursday or Friday to bag your preferred slot before it fills up (full slots will be greyed out).

If there isn't going to be a Happy Hour window in the upcoming weekend, we'll try to give you more notice.

Not going to be in? No stress, just leave it unbooked and keep your tokens tucked away for another weekend.Not going to be in? Don’t schedule anything and save your Happy Hour for another weekend. 

Two reasons: to reward you for being an awesome customer and to encourage you to help make the energy system cleaner and cheaper to run by shifting a chunk of your energy use to off-peak times.  

When energy demand is at its highest (usually around teatime), the network sometimes fires up expensive fossil fuel generators to keep up. Weekends are a different story: on Saturdays and Sundays, electricity demand drops but there’s more clean, renewable energy to use up.

By giving you Happy Hours at the weekend, we can reward you for shifting your energy use away from busy times. You get to do some of the household admin for free – and together we can soak up excess renewables from the grid. A win all round!

If you're a Charge Pack customer, set your Happy Hour to the exact time listed in your Charge Pack Session notification email. This will get you a free battery charge, plus free electricity for the rest of your home.

If you're on IO Flux, we suggest picking the 11:00–12:00 Happy Hour time slot. This is often the best time to top up your battery, so is the most likely window to overlap with its charging schedule. Here's how to pick your Happy Hour time slot.

Yes! To get the most out of them, plug in your EV about 5-10min before your free power slot starts. This gives smart charging a chance to kick in before the free hour begins. Remember: your whole home’s electricity will be free during this time too! Win win.

Your credit will be based on the energy price that’s active at the time: so if you’re smart charging, it’ll be based on your cheap rate. If not, it’ll be based on your day rate.

What about boost charging if you already have a smart schedule set up? It’s worth keeping in mind that there isn’t really a financial advantage to doing this: both options will look the same on your bill.

Here’s how it would work if you used 5 kWh:

That’s why it’s better to smart charge if you can. Even though both are free, smart charging helps us keep things in balance. Loads of customers pressing “Boost” at once can cause strain on our systems: it’s kind of like everyone spamming the “refresh” button at once and crashing the Internet. Not good for you or us!

Don't worry, you can still take part! However, some of you incredible seasoned load-shifters might find it tricky to save power during a Power Down because they generally happen at times you probably try to save power anyway. So here's how to get involved.

Feeling like you don’t get much value from Happy Hours?

It’s true that you may not benefit as much — but the daily savings and export earnings from your tech will already deliver far more value than an hour of free energy a week. Customers have earned £100 million from our export tariffs in the past year alone. 

We created Happy Hours to introduce more people to smart energy; showing them how they can benefit by shifting and helping the system. As someone already using smart tech to balance the grid every day, you’re already ahead of the curve: so thanks for leading the way.

We’ve created a new way for some battery customers to save extra by helping the grid in Charge Pack — you might like to check it out. And if you want to spread the word further, you can refer friends to get Octopus solar, heat pump or EV charger and share a great cash reward.

Yes, you can! Just keep in mind that how much sense it makes to join a Happy Hour probably comes down to what your Agile rates look like that day.

If your Happy Hour lands at the same time your unit rates are ridiculously cheap (or even negative), your energy is basically free anyway. On the other hand, since Power Down sessions tend to happen at peak times, you’re probably already used to avoiding those times – making it hard to save more power against a very low baseline. There’s only so much energy one can shift!

That said – as an Agile pro, you’re already leading the charge when it comes to energy flexibility. Sure, it might mean the odd Weekend Happy Hour doesn’t really make sense for you, but your smart tariff rewards more than make up for it. 

We've heard that some customers are getting our Saving Sessions email alerts way too late, so can't take part (and therefore miss the chance to work towards a Weekend Happy Hour credit!).

Argh, how frustrating! We're so sorry to hear this is happening. We dug into it and here's what we found.

The delays seem to be happening to customers with Talk Talk, BT, Virgin Media, NTLWorld or Blueyonder email addresses. Our tech team says that these providers impose very strict limits on how many messages they will accept from SendGrid, the platform that we use to send out emails, before they block traffic. SendGrid therefore has to send emails to those customers much slower than to other providers.

We'd love to start sending our emails earlier to give these slowpoke providers more time, but we can't: we only find out about the Saving Session timings at about lunchtime.

We're speaking to SendGrid and doing our best to find a workaround because we know this is wildly frustrating for anyone affected.

If you have one of the impacted email domains, we'll send you alerts via app notification so you don't miss out. Download our app and enable notifications. (Psst, app notification invites are nearly ready for everyone else soon too!)

We suggest following our Savings Sessions alert page on X or our Octopus Energy account on Bluesky and turning on notifications. We'll always let you know about Savings Sessions in good time.

If there’s a glitch and we don’t receive smart meter data to tell us how much electricity you used during the Happy Hour, we’ll credit you for the average amount of electricity participating customers used during the Happy Hour.

If a meter glitch happens during a Power Down, you’ll still get a Weekend Happy Hour credit.

There's a slightly frustrating answer to this question: at the moment, we can only send Saving Sessions or Weekend Happy Hours alerts to the primary email on each account. We're trying to come up with a solution, as loads of you have told us that you want your partner or housemate to get in on the action.

Our writer Nicki had this exact problem: her husband's email address was the primary one on their account, so she was missing out on alerts. She got him to set up a simple forwarding system in Gmail and thought it might be useful to explain how she did it.

Here we go!

First, you need to tell Gmail you're cool with forwarding email to someone and they're cool with receiving it from you. Here's how to do that bit:

Then create the filter

That's it! Your partner should now get all Saving Session emails (whether Power Up or Power Down), plus reminders to book your Weekend Happy Hour slot. We hope that helped.

If you use a different email provider, we'd suggest typing "How do I forward emails on [email provider]" into Google. You should get pretty clear instructions.

If you don’t see a token appear in your dashboard in around 3 days of a Power Down session, it's usually because:

Read more about how we work out your baseline.