The zero-bills home: how one family is beating the energy price hikes — SkimNews
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- Clare Naylor's four-bedroom detached home in Milton Keynes, built in the 1980s, was fitted with 17 solar panels, a heat pump, a large garage battery, and four new radiators — turning it into a mini power station that feeds excess energy back to the grid.
- Octopus Energy's 'Zero Bills' tariff guarantees the family no energy bills for five years as long as they stay within a usage cap set per household; technical director Nigel Banks said homes must generate more energy than they use so the company can earn revenue selling surplus power to the grid.
- Santander funded the retrofit for free as part of a project exploring how to finance home energy upgrades; the same work would have cost just under £20,000 after a government grant, or £389 a month at 6.4% interest over five years on the bank's home improvement loan.
- The energy price cap rose 4% from today with predictions of a further 16% increase in January, while the Naylors — who had previously paid about £130 a month and limited heating to 18C with blankets and hot-water bottles — now plan to redirect that sum to holidays.
- To qualify, homes must have no gas at all, even for cooking, forcing the Naylors to remove their gas boiler; the zero-bill promise also excludes electric vehicle charging.
- The Zero Bills tariff previously operated only in hundreds of new-build homes for five years; the Naylor retrofit is part of Octopus's first tests of the model on older, retrofitted properties, with Santander's Mick Taylor flagging energy bills as the second- or third-biggest outgoing for most of the bank's 1.5m mortgage customers.
Why it matters: Octopus's expansion of Zero Bills into older retrofitted homes and Santander's parallel push to develop retrofit financing show banks and energy firms actively building products aimed at what Santander calls the second- or third-biggest outgoing for most of its 1.5m mortgage customers. The Naylor case proves the template works — a household paying £130 a month now pays nothing — but the £20,000 retrofit cost, or £389 a month at 6.4% interest, means scaling the model depends on financing solutions Santander says are still being designed.
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