Solar guide

Why Octopus is popular with solar owners

Most energy suppliers treat solar customers as an afterthought. You generate electricity, they give you a token export payment under the Smart Export Guarantee, and that's about it. Octopus takes a completely different approach. They've built tariffs that are specifically designed around how solar and battery systems actually work.

The result is that Octopus customers with solar panels and batteries can genuinely reduce their electricity bills to nearly nothing. Some households with larger setups make a small profit in the summer months. That's not marketing puff. It's the reality of combining free solar generation with smart import/export pricing.

There are three main tariff options worth looking at: Flux, Agile with export, and Intelligent Go paired with solar. Each suits a different setup and a different level of involvement.

Octopus Flux: the solar battery tariff

Flux is the tariff that was built specifically for solar and battery households. It's the one that gets the most attention in the solar community, and for good reason. The core idea is simple: buy cheap, store it, sell expensive.

Flux uses three rate bands that apply to both imports (buying from the grid) and exports (selling back):

Rates are approximate and vary by region. Check the tariff comparison tool for your exact postcode rates.

The strategy is straightforward. During the off-peak window (02:00 to 05:00), you charge your battery from the grid at the cheapest rate. During the day, your solar panels generate electricity that you use in the house and store in the battery. Then during the peak window (4pm to 7pm), when the export rate is highest, you discharge your battery back to the grid and get paid premium rates for it.

The margin between the off-peak import (~12p) and the peak export (~34p) is where the money is. You're essentially buying electricity for 12p and selling it for 34p, pocketing the difference as a reduction on your bill. Add in the free solar generation during the day and the numbers start to look very attractive.

For more detail on Flux, including who it suits and what equipment you need, see the full Flux tariff guide.

Agile export: variable rates that can spike high

If Flux is the steady, predictable option, Agile export is the more volatile alternative. On Agile, your export rate changes every half hour, tracking wholesale market prices. Most of the time these rates are modest. On a good day when wholesale prices spike (cold snaps, low wind generation, high demand), the export rate can shoot well above what you'd get on Flux.

The appeal of Agile export is the upside. During wholesale price spikes, you could be exporting at 40p, 50p or occasionally even higher per kWh. If you've got a battery and you time your exports to coincide with these peaks, the returns can be excellent.

The downside is unpredictability. On a mild, windy day when wholesale prices are low, you might be exporting at 5-8p/kWh. That's less than Flux's standard daytime export rate. Over a full year, whether Agile or Flux works out better depends on how volatile the wholesale market is and how good you are at timing your exports.

Agile export suits people who enjoy checking prices, tweaking their battery schedules and optimising their setup. If you want something you can set and forget, Flux is the better choice. For the full breakdown, see the Agile tariff guide.

Intelligent Go with solar

Intelligent Go is primarily designed for EV owners, giving a cheap overnight rate of around 7.5p/kWh for six hours. It wasn't built with solar in mind, but some households with both an EV and solar panels find it works well as a combination.

The idea is this: charge your home battery (and your EV) overnight at the cheap Intelligent Go rate. During the day, your solar panels cover your household consumption and top up the home battery. You barely touch the grid during daytime hours, so the higher daytime rate on Intelligent Go doesn't matter much because you're not importing.

The limitation is the export side. Intelligent Go doesn't offer the premium export rates that Flux does. You'd be on the standard Smart Export Guarantee rate for any surplus generation, which is typically lower. If you're generating a lot of surplus solar and want to maximise your export income, Flux or Agile will serve you better. If your priority is cheap overnight charging for both your home battery and your EV, Intelligent Go is worth considering.

The Smart Export Guarantee (SEG)

If you have solar panels, you're entitled to be paid for the electricity you export to the grid under the government's Smart Export Guarantee. Every energy supplier with over 150,000 customers must offer a SEG tariff, but they're allowed to set their own rates. Some suppliers offer as little as 1-3p per kWh, which is frankly insulting.

Octopus's SEG rates are among the best in the market, typically around 4-5p/kWh on the basic Outgoing Octopus tariff. That's still modest compared to what you can earn on Flux or Agile export, but it's a decent baseline if you're on a simpler tariff and don't have a battery.

The SEG is worth having even if you're on Flux or Agile, as it acts as a fallback for any surplus generation that isn't covered by those tariff-specific export rates. Your smart meter handles the metering automatically. You just need to make sure you've signed up for an export tariff, which you can do through the Octopus app.

A real-world example

To put some numbers on this, take a typical household with a 4kW solar array and a 10kWh home battery on the Flux tariff.

• Overnight charging: the battery charges 10kWh from the grid at ~12p/kWh. Cost: ~£1.20.
• Daytime solar: On a decent day, a 4kW array generates 12-16kWh. Most of this covers household use (lights, fridge, appliances) and tops up the battery. Cost: £0.
• Peak export: During the 4-7pm window, you discharge, say, 8kWh from the battery to the grid at ~34p/kWh. Income: ~£2.72.
• Net result for the day: You've spent £1.20 on overnight imports and earned £2.72 from peak exports. That's £1.52 profit before you count the free solar generation that covered most of your daytime use.

Obviously this is an ideal scenario. On cloudy days, short winter days, or days where you use a lot of electricity during peak hours, the numbers won't look as rosy. Over a full year, most Flux customers with this sort of setup report electricity costs close to zero rather than a net profit, but even that represents a saving of £800-1,200 compared to a standard tariff.

Flux vs Agile: which one?

This is the big question for solar battery owners, and the honest answer is that it depends on your temperament as much as your equipment.

Many solar enthusiasts start on Flux because it's simpler to understand and the returns are reliable. Some later switch to Agile once they're confident with their setup and want to chase higher returns. You can switch between tariffs freely with Octopus (no exit fees), so there's no risk in trying one and moving to the other if it doesn't suit you.

You'll need a smart meter

This is worth flagging early because it's a hard requirement. Flux, Agile and all the export tariffs need a smart meter that can record both import and export readings in half-hourly intervals. Without one, Octopus can't measure when you're importing and when you're exporting, which is the entire basis of these tariffs.

If you don't have a smart meter yet, Octopus will install one for free. You can book the installation through the app once you're a customer. It takes about 30-45 minutes and the engineer handles everything. You'll need a SMETS2 meter (the newer standard) for export functionality to work properly. If you've got an older SMETS1 meter, it may need replacing.

You'll also want to make sure your solar inverter and battery system are compatible with half-hourly metering. Most modern hybrid inverters (GivEnergy, SolarEdge, Solis, Tesla Powerwall, etc.) work fine. If you're not sure, your solar installer should be able to confirm.

Solar without a battery

What if you've got solar panels but no battery? Flux won't make sense because the whole strategy depends on storing cheap overnight electricity and discharging it at peak times. Without a battery, you can't do either of those things.

For solar-only households, the best approach is usually the standard Flexible tariff combined with the Outgoing Octopus export tariff. You'll use your solar generation during the day to offset your imports and get paid for any surplus you send back to the grid. The numbers won't be as impressive as Flux with a battery, but it's still a meaningful saving on your electricity bills.

If you're thinking about adding a battery in the future, switching to Octopus now makes sense anyway. You'll be set up, familiar with the system and ready to move to Flux as soon as the battery is installed.

Further reading

For deeper dives into the individual tariffs mentioned above:

• Octopus Flux guide - full breakdown of the three-rate structure and who it suits
• Agile Octopus guide - how half-hourly pricing works and the export side
• Intelligent Go guide - the EV charging tariff and how it pairs with solar
• All tariff guides - compare everything in one place