Community Power Club

Class A Licence Exempt Supply is designed for small suppliers, enabling small scale generators to supply no more than 5MW without needing a fully supply licence. No more than 2.5MW of this can be supplied to domestic customers. The legal definition from the UK’s Electricity Order 2001 is as follows:

Class A: Small suppliers

Persons (other than licensed suppliers) who do not supply any electricity except electricity which they generate themselves and who do not at any time supply more electrical power than 5 megawatts of which not more than 2.5 megawatts is supplied to domestic consumers.

A.1. For the purposes of Class A electrical power supplied by a body corporate which is associated with any supplier shall be treated as supplied by that supplier.

Licence Exempt Supply allows electricity generators to supply directly to consumers without having to hold a full electricity supply licence, under certain conditions as set out in the UK's Electricity Order 2001.

There are different classifications of licence exempt supply and these have different eligibility criteria, some also have specific volume limits.

To be a Class A licence exempt supplier you need to be:

• Supplying electricity which you have generated yourself, such as through Solar PV, Wind or Hydro.
• Be supplying, across all classifications of licence exempt supply, no more than 5MW (of which no more than 2.5MW per hour supplied to domestic customers) of supply. N.B. These limits are applied per body corporate, meaning any Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) or associated bodies will be considered together with your organisation as one entity, not separately.
• Not be in receipt of ROCs or FiT export.

Please note you are responsible for confirming your eligibility under the Class A Licence Exempt Supply rules and ensuring that you remain compliant.

Class C Licence Exempt Supply applies to onsite and private wire supplies. It allows generators to supply directly to specific consumers on the same site, or via private wires, without needing a fully supply license. The full definition can be found here.

As Community Power Club is based on the Class A licence exempt supply rules, we need to verify that you’re eligible to be a Class A licence exempt supplier in order to participate. Class A is only for small suppliers who do not supply more than 5MW in total, across all classifications of licence exempt supply. This means that we need to check how much other licence exempt supply you have, including Class C (behind the meter or private wire sales of electricity).

There are a number of levies that are applied to licensed supply volumes and these are priced into consumer electricity bills. These levies pay for a number of subsidy programmes, such as Contracts for Difference and Renewables Obligation among others. These levies are only payable on licensed supplies, meaning licence exempt supplies can be exempted from these levy charges. This exemption creates a financial saving that we can pass on to the generators and consumers in the Club.

The financial benefit from Class A Licence Exempt Supply varies for two main reasons:

1. The value of the levies charged per MWh is variable. While some of the levies are fixed for a period of time, others such as the CfD levy vary every half-hour. This means there’s no set value per MWh of licence exempt supply.
2. The volume of licence exempt supply you will have will vary. This depends on how much you generate, and how much the club consumes during that time - how much is matched.

As we need to have visibility of your other licence exempt supplies in order to effectively apply the volume limits, we do not recommend this. Please discuss this with us if you have any licence exempt supply arrangements with other suppliers.

If you have created a Community Power Club, you will be matched first and foremost with any members you have invited into your Club. If you have more generation than consumption in any half-hour, we will top you up. This means matching this surplus generation with existing businesses on Octopus Energy’s supply to help you earn more for your power.

If you don’t want to set up a Community Power Club, but would still like the benefits of licence exempt supply, we can still support you with this. We’ll match you exclusively with existing businesses on Octopus Energy’s supply under their Electric Match Clubs offer.

Sort of, yes! You’d be supplying energy to end consumers through a licence exemption. However, there is still a licensed supplier involved to support this arrangement - Younity are powered by Octopus Energy, who would be the licensed supplier in the arrangement. Octopus Energy meets all the regulatory requirements of the licensed supply, ensuring that even if your community energy project isn’t generating enough electricity to meet the consumer’s demand, the consumer will receive enough electricity to meet their demands.

It is up to you how you would like to structure your club and who you would like to invite. However, any consumers wishing to join your club will need to meet the minimum eligibility requirements:

1. Households must be on the Co-Op Community Power Tariff or one of Octopus Energy’s Smart tariffs for import and have a smart meter which provides half-hourly data.
2. Businesses must be with Octopus Energy and be half-hourly metered.

Yes! Provided they meet the minimum eligibility requirements.

This is up to you to decide. You don’t have to imply any location eligibility to your Club, but you can do so if you wish to focus the benefits of membership to your Community Power Club on a specific area. There are no location limits to Class A Licence Exempt Supply.

We’ll seek to top up any surplus generation not matched with your invited club members using existing business consumers on Octopus Energy’s supply.

Once you have created a Community Power Club, we’ll give you a unique invite link that members of your chosen community can use to join your Club. To request to join, they will need to create an Octopus Labs account, accept the Community Power Club T&Cs and send a join request. You can then approve this as the Club Admin if they meet your criteria. Through their Octopus Labs account, they will then be able to access your Club dashboard.

Yes! If you have multiple renewable energy projects, you can put these all in the same club. If you want to separate these out for any reason, and have different clubs for different clusters of projects, that’s possible too.

Yes. You’ll just need to agree between you what types of members you’ll accept into your Club (i.e. if you’re applying any additional eligibility criteria such as location), and who will look after join requests.