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This week on Watchdog, we investigated Octopus Energy, amid claims that the company is failing some solar panel customers when it comes to exporting excess energy back to the grid.

Octopus Energy promise that customers can sell unused energy back to the grid. But for some, that promise has fallen flat.

In 2022, Jonathon from West Yorkshire spent £15,000 installing 33 solar panels on his barn. However, despite his hopes, he was still unable to sell his electricity back to the grid after joining Octopus Energy in February 2024. Over the following months, three engineers were sent out to install a smart meter—but none of them succeeded. Since joining Octopus, Jonathon hasn't received a single payment for the excess energy he's generated, which he estimates to be worth around £180 a month over the past 15 months.

Sheena from Devon was also told that a smart meter was essential in order to begin exporting energy. Sheena warned Octopus Energy immediately that she didn’t have mobile signal in her house, so when the engineer visited, she wasn’t surprised that he confirmed that the smart meter wouldn’t work. He explained that instead she needed an aerial. Five months later, despite being added to the waiting list for an aerial, Sheena’s smart meter still doesn’t function. She’s stuck with estimated bills—and unable to sell a single unit of her excess electricity.

In response to these case studies, Octopus Energy told us that it has spoken to both Jonathan and Sheena and has come to a resolution that each are happy with.

Octopus started by saying there are over 30 million smart meters now installed across Great Britain, and on the whole, they work incredibly well. It said that with any technology there are sometimes wobbles, such as when mobile phones inexplicably lose signal.

In relation to our case studies, it told us that Jonathan has a very unusual type of meter at his home, usually used for businesses with high usage rather than in a domestic environment. It told us the meter was installed before Jonathan became an Octopus customer, and when he moved over to the company, the information Octopus received about the meter was incorrect, so it thought he had a more standard type. This meant that when Octopus first tried to fix his export issues, it didn’t have the right information to hand. It said it sent several engineers, but because the meter is a commercial meter, each wasn’t qualified to work on it. We were told that this didn’t trigger the supplier to escalate the problem internally, as it should have done, in order to get advice from someone more senior. Instead, a well-meaning team member sent another engineer to see if they could help. Now Octopus knows what the issue is, it may be able to fix the meter remotely, and if not, it can contract an engineer with the relevant qualifications to fix the it. It added that the metering industry is very technical, meaning engineers specialise in different meter types, and that Octopus doesn’t have commercial experts within its team.

Octopus admitted that Jonathan is entirely right, and he is absolutely still eligible for payments for the energy he exports from his solar panels through the Smart Export Guarantee, as long as he provides manual meter readings, as the OFGEM rules state. We’ve been told that one of Octopus Energy’s senior team has spoken to Jonathan to explain the situation and asked him to start sending manual readings. His account will then be credited for the solar energy he has exported since he had solar panels installed, while engineers work to fix the meter. Jonathan has also been offered a £500 goodwill gesture as the supplier looks to make the necessary fixes, with it acknowledging that his case has not been handled as well as it would have hoped.

In Sheena’s case, Octopus told us that she lives in an area with very low signal. This means her smart meter has difficulty communicating with Octopus, and means that it had to add a small aerial known as a T3, to boost the signal. Octopus told us it didn’t cover itself in glory here either. It said it’s tricky when people live in areas where signal is poor: there are various different signal boosters it can use and there is often a lot of troubleshooting on its end, and asking the right engineer to attend. However, it said her case definitely took too long to sort, and Sheena shouldn’t have had to chase Octopus at all. It told us that it has finally fixed the issue after engineers went to Sheena’s house on Friday 6th June 2025 to install a small aerial, which boosts the smart meter’s signal and ensures the meter will communicate properly with the company. It clarified that everything is now working. Octopus has said it will calculate what credit Mrs. King should have received from exporting energy from her solar panels through the Smart Export Guarantee, and reduce a portion of her energy used in that time. Mrs. King has also been offered a £200 goodwill gesture by Octopus Energy, as it appreciates this should have been picked up and prevented by its team sooner.

You can watch the full VT here for 28 days, on iPlayer - /iplayer/episode/m002drr6/the-one-show-18062025