Our family switched to Bulb Energy in 2017 and remained their customers until a recent move to a new house caused me to reconsider our choice of energy supplier. After a lot of thought and research, we decided to move away from Bulb and switch to Octopus Energy instead. Here is why.
Innovative Green Energy Plans and Tariffs
There are now more than fifty independent energy suppliers in the UK, which is a welcome challenge to the big five suppliers. What makes these smaller companies stand out is their focus on supplying electricity from renewable sources at competitive prices. The larger suppliers have green energy plans, too; however, companies such as Bulb and Octopus only supply 100% green electricity and offer plans to allow you to carbon offset your gas usage.
So if being eco-friendly is important to you, then an independent energy supplier will probably serve you best, but if Octopus Energy and Bulb both have excellent green credentials, what made me move from Bulb to Octopus?
Bulb have only two tariffs – pay monthly or pay as you go. This simplicity is helpful and was fine for our family for many years, but as we have a SMETS2 smart meter in our new house, we now can benefit from more dynamic pricing and more interactive plans that make better use of the latest technologies, which is a strong point in favour of Octopus Energy.
BY interacting with a SMETS2 smart meter, Octopus has a plan called Octopus Go, that reduces the electricity price by around 75% between the hours of 00:30 and 04:30 every night so that if you have an electric vehicle, you can charge it overnight very cheaply. Octopus also has a plan tailored for those with solar panels so that you can reclaim money from any electricity that you feed back into the grid.
So, it is the innovative tariffs and plans that attracted me to Octopus. Bulb are good, but not at this time as innovative as Octopus, which is a shame.
Fixed Cost Tariffs
Whilst the per-unit prices for Octopus and Bulb are broadly the same, Octopus have the advantage in offering a fixed rate tariff that does not increase the cost of electricity or gas for 12 months.
Electricity and gas prices are set to rise as Ofgem has recently increased the energy price cap which has already encouraged large energy suppliers to announce price rises that could add £96 per year to energy bills. It is highly likely that many, if not all, energy suppliers will be increase their charges over the next few months, particularly as oil prices are likely to increase, which could put upwards pressure on wholesale energy costs.
So the fact that we have now fixed our energy prices for the next 12 months is a definite bonus for switching to Octopus.
Friend and Family referral scheme
Like Bulb Energy, Octopus Energy also operates a friends and family referral scheme that helps them grow significantly. Octopus claim to be recruiting 30,000 new customers per month and now supply 1.5 million households, so they must be doing a lot right in the highly competitive energy marketplace.
Octopus will pay a £50 credit to the account of a switcher and £50 to the friend who referred them, so if you would like to benefit from this scheme, you are welcome to use this Octopus Energy referrer link. You will not only save money by switching to Octopus and benefiting from their fixed rate tariffs, but you will help the environment, which is brilliant!
Conclusion
It wasn’t an easy decision to switch from Bulb to Octopus, as our years with Bulb were trouble-free, and they offer an excellent service.
However, Bulb’s focus on plan simplicity no longer suits our purposes. Octopus Energy provides attractive, innovative plans that exploit SMETS2 smart meters’ technology whilst promoting eco-friendly energy supply and home electricity generation with solar panels.
It’s early days, but so far, Octopus has been great. Our switch was painless and very quick and easy – we didn’t have to do anything other than taking gas and electricity readings. So so far, so very good.
My message to Bulb Energy is not to be too complacent. Plan simplicity is great, but in our area, at least, many householders are thinking about installing solar panels. Electric car usage is also becoming more popular, so maybe Bulb should be looking at more innovative plans to prevent long term customers like me from switching to innovative companies like Octopus Energy.
Use this Octopus Energy Referral link to receive a £50 switching reward.