Octopus Energy has made its first foray into power generation with the acquisition of two small wind turbines. The supplier, recently valued at $2 billion, said that it planned to build a significant electricity generation business in Britain.
It is launching a tariff called the “Fan Club” that offers households living near its turbines cheaper electricity prices when the wind is blowing strongly.
Octopus Energy was founded in 2015 and supplies almost two million households. It is understood that the company aims in time to meet all its customers’ electricity needs either through its own generation or by directly contracting to purchase it from renewable generators.
The two turbines it has bought are in Caerphilly, south Wales, and Market Weighton, near York, and each has a 500-kilowatt capacity, enough to power up to 400 homes per year each.
Octopus said that customers who used electricity when the turbines were spinning, which was about 98 per cent of the time, would receive a 20 per cent discount on the unit price of electricity and, when the wind picked up, the unit price would drop by 50 per cent.
Zoisa Walton, a director, said that the purchases represented the start of a plan for Octopus Energy Generation. “It means we can begin producing the clean, green power we provide to customers ourselves,” she said.