The ideal supplier would provide the cheapest tariffs, have the best customer service and supply all their electricity from their own renewable energy generation and / or power purchase agreements (PPAs) with renewables generators.
However, good customer support costs money, and the complexities of matching generation and demand means that supplying entirely from your own generation / PPAs is more expensive.
In finding a supplier to recommend we look for a good balance of price and customer service. Our current recommended supplier is Octopus Energy.
Customer Service
Octopus Energy were the top rated supplier for 2019 and 2020 by Which? [1,2] and come towards the top with other ratings services.
Price
On price, the market is very volatile, especially for the cheapest tariffs as companies vie to offer the cheapest deals.
This means that the cheapest tariff can change on a daily basis.
Octopus tariffs tend not to be the very cheapest but are consistently cheaper than the majority of tariffs.
Getting the very cheapest tariff can mean changing supplier frequently and risking poor customer service. Being the cheapest can mean lower margins and an influx of customers that exceeds a company’s capacity to scale its support, at least in the short term.
Generation
Octopus Energy are a 100% renewables supplier. This is achieved by purchasing REGO certificates from renewable generators who have sold electricity to the wholesale market.
REGO certificates ensure that there is no double counting of renewable supply. Some purists may prefer a supplier that meets its entire supply through its own generation and / or PPAs, but the Octopus Group is also a renewables generator.
Octopus Energy’s sister company Octopus Renewables is a significant generator of renewables electricity. This is mainly from solar, but also wind, hydro power, and a bit of biogas. They generate and sell to the wholesale market a similar amount of electricity to that which Octopus Energy supplies to its customers.
For more information on why they are set up this way rather than as a direct generator / supplier, see this Octopus Energy blog.
For more information on REGOs and the arguments around REGO trading, see About Green tariffs.
Tariffs
Octopus provide a variety of tariffs, mainly a variable option, and fixed price options for set periods. They also offer some innovative tariffs such as Agile which tracks half-hourly wholesale prices. This encourages customers to shift their electricity use away from the times peak demand. Lowering peak demand has the potential to make better use of the available renewable supply and reduce the need for fossil fuels.
Conclusion
We believe Octopus Energy provide a good balance for someone looking for a 100% renewables tariff from a reliable supplier at an affordable price.
We will review this recommendation regularly to ensure that their customer service remains good and their prices competitive.
Full disclosure
If you use the Octopus Energy link on this site to switch your electricity and gas to Octopus, you will receive a £50 credit on your Octopus Energy account [3] and we will also receive £50 from Octopus for the referral.
We used to decline referral fees to demonstrate that our rating of tariffs was not influenced by fees received. However, relying on donations did not provide sufficient income to maintain the site and carry out our assessment of tariffs.
Should we find that our recommended tariff no longer meets our criteria on service and price, we will either change the recommended supplier or remove this switching option.
[1] https://www.which.co.uk/news/2019/01/best-and-worst-energy-companies-for-2019/
[2] https://www.which.co.uk/news/2020/01/which-reveals-best-and-worst-energy-companies-for-2020/
[3] The credit to your account can take a couple of months. But please contact us if you switch using our link and don’t receive the credit. We are dependent on Octopus and their tracking systems, so cannot guarantee the credit.
