QUESTIONS ABOUT SIGNING UP?

All customers of the Hackney Light & Power Solar Scheme will receive the same tariff. 

The tariff is structured like any typical electricity tariff. It includes a daily or standing charge, and a charge for each unit of electricity you use.  

The tariff and rates we will charge until March 31st 2026 are:

• Standing Charge per day (p) = 36.79

• Unit Price per kWh = 22.05

We explain why you can be confident our prices will continue to be competitive after March 31st, 2026, below 

Please see the section ‘How can I be confident that the prices will stay competitive’ for a more detailed explanation.

No. You pay the same unit rate for all the electricity you use. It doesn't matter if it has been generated directly by the solar panels or delivered to you from the grid.  

This means that your savings with us are not dependent on how much solar electricity you happen to use individually. So, if you happen not to use much electricity when the sun is shining, for reasons you can’t control, you won’t lose out. 

This approach means that the scheme fair for all of our customers.

Yes. We will be regularly updating our customers on how much solar electricity has been used across the scheme. We'll also make it easy for you to understand how many carbon emissions you have saved by signing up. 

By becoming a customer you’ll be taking an important step to help the planet. We want you to know and feel good about the impact you are having. 😊

If you haven't switched for over a year you're almost certainly overpaying for your energy. That is because you are likely to be on a variable tariff. This is a tariff where the rate is set in line with the standard default tariff rate, set by the energy regulator Ofgem. 

In fact, most customers are on variable tariffs that are linked to Ofgem’s default tariff rate.

Ofgem’s current Energy Price Cap (Default Tariff) rates are:

• Standing Charge per day (p) = 43.76

• Price per kWh (p) = 24.33

Ours are:

• Standing Charge per day (p) = 36.79

• Price per kWh (p) = 22.05

That means you will be saving 6.97 pence per day for the standing charge and 2.28 pence for every unit of electricity that you use.

We are also competitive in the market against the major national energy suppliers. 

See our price comparison table for more details of how much you might be able to save.  

Please note that Ofgem update their rates every three months.  The next update is due to come into force on October the 1st.

Most residents will be on a variable tariff. One with rates that are effectively set by the energy regulator Ofgem. So you’re likely to see significant savings.

Even if you’re on a fixed tariff you’re also likely to see savings. To see how our prices compare to the market, look here.

Your exact savings will depend on your current tariff and how much electricity you use.

For illustration, a typical household in the UK uses 3,100kWh of electricity a year.

If you use this amount of electricity and pay by direct debit on a tariff that is the same as the Ofgem default tariff rate, you will save £121 a year, or 13% off your bill.

(On the Ofgem default tariff rate you would pay £939/yr. With us you would pay £818/yr.)

If you use this amount of electricity and pay by standard credit on a tariff that is the same as the Ofgem default tariff rate, you will save £190 a year, or 19% off your bill.

(On the Ofgem default tariff rate you would pay £1007/yr. With us you would pay £818/yr.)

Remember, the savings shown here are before the value of the incentives we are offering to our first 100 customers are taken into account.

So if you are one of those first customers then the savings that you can achieve could be £80 higher.  

We have fixed our tariff until the 31st of March 2026.  At that point, we will set a new unit rate and standing charge for the tariff, that will apply for the following year. 

Our scheme is structured so that you can have confidence that you will continue to get good prices for the electricity you buy. Even when the rates change.

Our goal is to offer you strong and sustained bill savings alongside increased energy security.  We can’t guarantee that you’ll always have the cheapest bills by sticking with us. Nobody can guarantee that.  

The one thing that we can guarantee is that you will be receiving a proportion of your electricity from your rooftop. Nobody else can say that. 

This means that, if you switch to us, you can be confident that your bills will always be affordable. 

When you switch to a new supplier you will often pay a lower price to begin with. Then you end up paying more when you move on to a variable tariff. One where the price is set by Ofgem’s default tariff cap. 

This means that you end up paying more for your energy than you need too.  Unless of course you want to switch energy suppliers almost every year. 

Our scheme is different. It’s designed to deliver long-term security for you on the price that you pay. We achieve this in 3 ways:  

1. On-site solar supply is the most cost-efficient way to receive electricity  

The solar electricity we supply you is generated literally on your rooftop. This means that it doesn’t need to be transported to you across the national grid infrastructure. So we can supply that solar to you at a lower cost than electricity supplied across the national grid. This is because there are costs to transporting electricity.  

Of course, not all the electricity we supply you comes from the solar panels. The rest we buy from the grid and resell to you.  

2. We buy the electricity you need from the grid through a large collective buying scheme. Meaning the grid electricity prices are kept low - and we sell it on to you at cost.  

You can be confident the price we pay for this electricity will be competitive for two reasons.  

We buy it through a very large collective purchasing scheme. The one used by Hackney council and many other councils and public bodies across the country.  

These organisations team up to buy electricity together so they can access cheaper prices. Buying so much electricity at one time increases their negotiating power. This means they can access cheaper prices from suppliers than they could achieve individually. 

They are also better able to manage how and when the electricity is purchased to get good prices.  

Electricity prices change all the time. So, we can’t guarantee that we will always have the cheapest grid prices in the market. But you can be confident the prices will always be competitive   

Not least because of regulation set by the government on our solar scheme. We’re not allowed to make a profit on the electricity we supply you from the grid. We have sell it to you for the same price we buy it for. In case it’s not clear enough already, this should convince you we’re not like the other energy suppliers. 😊 

3. We are backed by Hackney Council 

In backing this scheme, the council has placed a strong emphasis on ensuring security of outcomes for residents. 

This means that there are enforceable contractual protections embedded in the scheme. These exist to ensure that value created by the scheme is returned to residents. This means that our solar electricity generation is ring-fenced from the national energy market.  

So, if energy prices were to rise significantly again, like they did when Ukraine was invaded, our prices would stay lower. This is because we would only seek to recover the fair costs involved to run the scheme. We would be sharing the solar benefits between our customers outside of national pricing. This means that your electricity bill would be a lot lower than the market 

We appreciate that this can sound complicated. So, if you want us to explain it to you in more detail, simply get in touch using the form below.

No. There is no minimum term on our energy supply contracts. And no, we are not planning to charge any exit fees should you decide to switch suppliers and leave the scheme.  

By offering the greenest energy you can buy and some of the best pricing in the market we hope that you’ll want to stay with us for a long time. 

If you are one of our first 100 customers and decide to leave within six months of joining you may need to repay the £80 of energy credit.

If you do decide to switch away, we’ll be sad to see you go, but we will help arrange switching out your solar smart meter for a standard one with your new supplier.

We charge the same unit rate for all the electricity you use. This includes both the electricity generated directly by the solar panels and the electricity delivered to you from the grid.  

Generating electricity using solar panels is cheap to do once they are installed. But it is expensive to buy the panels and have them installed. We charge you to use the solar electricity, to help us pay off the cost of installing the solar panels in the first place.  

We install our solar panels in an efficient way. One that uses our new Solar4Flats solution. So we're able to charge low prices for the use of solar to cover low installation costs. This helps us to maximise the savings that we give to you. 

While we are regulated, we only supply electricity locally, on schemes like the one you are part of in Hackney. This means that we aren’t subject to the some of the rules that apply to traditional national suppliers. Things like the Ofgem energy price cap.  

This is because we are semi-independent from the national grid. This semi-independence is a key reason why you can have confidence you will always get competitive prices from us.  We are helping to provide you with energy security at a local level. 

No, we only supply electricity. We were set up to help Hackney, the UK and the world transition away from fossil fuels, like gas, as an energy source. A clean energy future is one that is primarily based on using electricity, powered by renewables like solar and wind. 

Electricity is set to become the dominant energy source in the UK, and across the planet.  This is because the use of technologies like heat pumps and electric vehicles will become widespread.