Thanks for the heads-up. I hope it does achieve what he wants; let’s see.

This is an amazing quality acquisition/investment but not sure how it falls into Octopus' £5,000 heat pump strategy. When we interviewed Jason from RED he did hint that they couldn't compete with smaller, "cheaper" heat pumps. Maybe the Octopus funding will allow them to do that.

Very interesting guy and an interesting interview:

I’d imagine it’s going to be economies of scale - if they can make the plumbing guts and physical packaging at low cost in the Far East (e.g.) then add uk software and control electronics, then make lots of them it would be very interesting.

It does seem a bit of a change in strategy from that stated in the recent Octopus interview (from 10:46 to 12:08) where they wanted to work with the market and reward those manufacturers with easier to install and cheaper products.

I wonder whether this is partly a talent acquisition, and could be used to lead other ASHP manufacturers to try harder for the things which Octopus cares about (cost, ease of installation, electrical load shaping).

ASHP tariff soon to follow I would imagine

@batalto, I agree – it's just such a logical next step. I hope they do.

OVO heat pump tariff trial 

https://www.ovoenergy.com/blog/heat-pump-pro-trial

Posted by: @jeff

OVO heat pump tariff trial 

https://www.ovoenergy.com/blog/heat-pump-pro-trial

 

It's a bit restricted.  

"We are very excited about this innovative trial, as it aims to open up cheaper rates for heat pump owners all over the UK. At the moment, only Daikin heat pump owners³ living in a Northwards Housing Association property in Greater Manchester are eligible for this trial. But watch this space!"

A bit more searching suggest 700 homes but I'm not sure.  I suppose it's a start.

Posted by: @editor

@batalto, I agree – it's just such a logical next step. I hope they do.

I would be willing to bet the best Octopus Heat Pump tariffs will be for Octopus installed equipment, maybe a controller or the whole install. 

Posted by: @jeff

I would be willing to bet the best Octopus Heat Pump tariffs will be for Octopus installed equipment, maybe a controller or the whole install. 

That's a good point @jeff but Octopus are going a step further than that... for devices that they 'approve of' even if not supplied by them.

Flex (OVO) and Kraken (Octopus) are both designed as nationwide control systems for mass distributed energy devices.

OVO state that Flex is available for licensing by other Energy Suppliers, which is one reason that it's owned by their sister-company Kaluza.

But the Works with Octopus scheme is promoting a mechanism by which device manufacturers can incorporate the proprietary Kraken protocols into their products. Thus their customers would be offered seamless efficiencies whilst operating under the Octopus Agile ToU tariff.

It puzzles me how such a tie-in is permitted within the Licences issued to Energy Suppliers by Ofgem.

How can an end-user assess the financial value of the efficiencies and cost-effectiveness imbued by Kraken when considering a switch to a rival Supplier?

Would they have to take the risk of switching first in order to evaluate whether they were better off or not?

Even if the Ofgem Licence hasn't specifically addressed this scenario, wouldn't it fall foul of the "fair contract-terms" sections in the Consumer Rights Act?

If Phil Steele is reading this, could he please give us some clarification?

On a related note, both Kraken and Flex use the internet to send out commands to devices. The systems are encrypted and approved by NCSC (GCHQ), but would still be threatened by basic DOS attacks from a malicious (state-owned?) foreign actor.

Do devices with Flex/Kraken interfaces store several hours/days of command schedules in advance in order to continue operation through loss of communications links?

Do OVO/Octopus offer guarantees that the end-user would not be financially disadvantaged by loss of cost-efficiency and ToU-based commands during such an outage?

Is ownership of the companies offering Flex/Kraken control restricted such that the products cannot fall into the hands of foreign owners?

If not, why not?

After all, such smart control systems are set to become an important foundation stone in the UK's energy strategy.

What happens if our investments in heat-pumps, V2G chargers and smart storage batteries are left threatened by an organisation outside of UK legal controls and Ofgem licences?

Shared, open protocols are good but anything that ties in a user or otherwise restricts choice of electricity supplier based on hardware is a really, really bad idea.