Octopus Energy
Utilities & PersonalConnect AI agents to Octopus Energy, the UK energy supplier. Agents read public tariffs and product data, pull half-hourly meter consumption, and check account and industry records.
What This Integration Enables
Octopus Energy publishes something most energy suppliers do not: tomorrow's electricity price, per half hour, on a public API that needs no credential at all. That single fact is what makes this connector interesting to an automation platform. Everything else in the energy stack is retrospective, but Agile Octopus day ahead prices are forward-looking and machine-readable, which turns "when should this run" from a habit into a calculation. Set against that, be plain about what this connector is: it is entirely read-only. There is no action here that switches a tariff, moves an account, or turns anything on. Sixteen actions, all reads. Its value in a flow is that it makes somebody else's write correct.
The catalog half is public and needs no key. List Products browses the published tariffs, including Agile Octopus, Octopus Go, Cosy Octopus, fixed and standard variable, prepayment and export products, each carrying the product code the other tariff actions require plus flags such as is_variable, is_green, is_prepay, and is_business. Get Product returns the full definition, with every regional variant keyed by grid supply point group (_A through _P) and payment method, grouped into single register electricity, dual register (Economy 7 day and night), four rate EV, and single register gas tariffs, each with its tariff code, standing charge, and unit rates excluding and including VAT. Get Electricity Standard Unit Rates, Get Electricity Day Unit Rates, Get Electricity Night Unit Rates, Get Electricity Standing Charges, Get Gas Standard Unit Rates, and Get Gas Standing Charges read the price series themselves, in pence, both excluding and including VAT, and with valid_from and valid_to on every record. Find Cheapest Rate Slots is the derived one: it reads the published rates for a window, sorts by price including VAT, and returns the requested number of slots in ascending price order alongside the window average and the count of periods considered. List Grid Supply Points and Get Electricity Meter Point resolve a postcode or a 13 digit MPAN to the region letter that decides which tariff variant applies, and tariff codes embed that letter at the end, so E-1R-AGILE-24-10-01-C is the London variant.
The account half needs a key. Authentication is HTTP Basic with the API key as the username and a blank password. Get Account returns every property with its address, move in and move out dates, and the electricity and gas meter points registered there, and Get Account Meter Points flattens that into one entry per meter serial with its fuel type, MPAN or MPRN, and the tariff code currently in force. Get Electricity Consumption and Get Gas Consumption read half hourly usage per meter, and Summarize Electricity Consumption returns totals, the interval count, the mean, and the highest and lowest intervals with timestamps rather than a long list. Octopus publishes no event subscription, so this service ships no triggers: everything here runs on a schedule, and the schedule has to know when the data it wants actually exists.
Without FlowRunner
With FlowRunner
Use Case Scenarios
Load scheduled against tomorrow's prices instead of last month's bill
A site charges electric vehicles overnight and wants the cheapest half hours rather than a fixed window. In the afternoon, after Agile day ahead prices are usually published, the agent calls Find Cheapest Rate Slots for the overnight window and the site's regional tariff code, having resolved that code once through Get Electricity Meter Point using the MPAN from Get Account. The response carries the slots in ascending price order, the window average, and, importantly, the count of periods considered. The agent posts the proposed schedule and both of those figures to Slack and hands the approved slots to the system that actually controls the chargers, because nothing on this connector can switch anything. All timestamps go out as ISO 8601 with a trailing Z, since omitting it can shift results by an hour during British Summer Time, which on a half hourly tariff is not a rounding error but two whole settlement periods.
A usage tracker that does not pretend the last day is complete
Weekly, the agent calls Summarize Electricity Consumption for each meter it discovered through Get Account Meter Points, which returns total kWh, the number of intervals read, the mean interval, and the highest and lowest intervals with their timestamps. It writes those to Google Sheets alongside the interval count rather than the total alone. That count is the honesty check: consumption readings typically arrive a day or so after the fact, so a run that expects 336 half hourly intervals in a week and gets 290 is reporting on six days, and a chart that hides the difference will show a drop in usage that never happened. Where the same figure feeds a downstream purchase, such as funding carbon avoidance through Ecologi, the interval count is what decides whether the number is safe to spend against.
Tariff comparison that reaches the right region
A finance team wants to know whether the tariff a site is on still makes sense. The agent calls List Grid Supply Points with the site postcode to get the group_id, for example _C for London, then List Products to enumerate what is available and Get Product for the candidates, reading the regional variant that matches that letter. It pairs Get Electricity Standard Unit Rates with Get Electricity Standing Charges, because a standing charge is billed for every day the meter point is on supply regardless of consumption and a unit rate comparison without it is not a bill comparison. For an Economy 7 site it compares Get Electricity Day Unit Rates against Get Electricity Night Unit Rates on the same tariff to work out whether shifting load overnight is worth anything, and for dual fuel it pulls the gas side through Get Gas Standard Unit Rates and Get Gas Standing Charges. Nothing switches. The output is a comparison a person acts on.
Human-in-Loop Highlight
Find Cheapest Rate Slots is the action to gate, and the reason is that it succeeds when it is wrong. Agile Octopus day ahead prices for the following day are usually published during the afternoon, and the connector's own documentation is explicit about the consequence: a window that runs past that point may return fewer slots than expected. It does not fail. It does not warn. It reads whatever rates have been published for the window, sorts them by price including VAT, and returns the requested number of slots in ascending order. Ask for the six cheapest half hours between 22:00 tonight and 07:00 tomorrow, run the flow at 13:00 before publication, and you get six slots chosen from a window that only half exists. They are genuinely the cheapest of what was available. They are not the cheapest of the night, and nothing in the response says so unless you look at the count of periods considered, which is exactly the field a flow written in a hurry ignores. Downstream, that partial answer becomes a charging schedule, a heat pump program, or an industrial run committed to a system this connector cannot reach and therefore cannot correct. The cost is not dramatic on any one night, which is what makes it durable: it is a bill quietly higher than it needed to be, every night, and the flow reports success throughout. So the agent puts the truthfulness of the window in front of a person before the schedule leaves the building. It calls Find Cheapest Rate Slots for the intended window, compares the returned count of periods considered against the number the window should contain, and posts to the operations owner in Slack: "Overnight charging schedule for tonight. I asked for the 6 cheapest half hours between 22:00 and 07:00, which is 18 settlement periods. Octopus returned rates for 11 of them, so the last three and a half hours have no published price yet and the slots I found are drawn from a partial window. Window average on what I can see is 14.2 pence per kWh including VAT, and the cheapest slot is 3.1 pence. Commit these 6 slots now, or wait until after 16:00 and re-run against the full window?" A person answers. The same discipline applies to the consumption side for the same underlying reason: readings arrive with a lag, SMETS1 gas meters report cubic meters where SMETS2 report kWh, and a cost figure built on either without checking is a number somebody will make a decision on. A read-only connector cannot break anything by itself. It can only be believed, which is why the digital andon cord here hangs on the completeness of the answer rather than on the act of writing.
Agent Capabilities
16 actionsProducts and Tariffs
8- List Products Lists energy products (tariffs) published on the Octopus Energy public API, including Agile Octopus, Octopus Go, Cosy Octopus, fixed and standard variable products, prepayment products, and export products. Each result carries the product code the other tariff operations need, plus flags such as is_variable, is_green, is_prepay, and is_business, and the availability window. Filters narrow the catalog and results are paginated, defaulting to 100 per page. Public, and does not consume account permissions.
- Get Product Retrieves the full definition of a single energy product, including every regional tariff variant keyed by grid supply point group (_A through _P) and by payment method (direct_debit_monthly, varying, or prepayment). Groups tariffs into single_register_electricity_tariffs, dual_register_electricity_tariffs (Economy 7 day and night), four_rate_ev_electricity_tariffs, and single_register_gas_tariffs, each with its tariff code, current standing charge, and current unit rates excluding and including VAT. Also returns sample annual quotes and the consumption figures behind them. Public.
- Get Electricity Standard Unit Rates Retrieves the standard (single register) electricity unit rates for a tariff, in pence per kWh excluding and including VAT. For half hourly products such as Agile Octopus this returns one record per 30 minute settlement period, so tomorrow's day ahead prices appear here once published each afternoon. For fixed and standard variable products it returns the small number of price periods that have applied over the life of the tariff. Newest first, paginated at 100 records per page unless Page Size is raised. Public.
- Get Electricity Day Unit Rates Retrieves the daytime electricity unit rates for a dual register (Economy 7) tariff, in pence per kWh excluding and including VAT. Only tariffs listed under dual_register_electricity_tariffs, whose codes contain the 2R register marker such as E-2R-VAR-22-11-01-C, expose day and night rates. Each record carries valid_from, valid_to, and the payment_method the price applies to. Public.
- Get Electricity Night Unit Rates Retrieves the off peak night electricity unit rates for a dual register (Economy 7) tariff, in pence per kWh excluding and including VAT. Pair this with Get Electricity Day Unit Rates to compare the two registers of the same tariff and work out whether shifting load overnight is worthwhile. Public.
- Get Electricity Standing Charges Retrieves the daily electricity standing charge history for a tariff, in pence per day excluding and including VAT. The standing charge is billed for every day the meter point is on supply regardless of consumption, so it is needed alongside unit rates to model a full bill. A null valid_to means the charge is still current. Public.
- Get Gas Standard Unit Rates Retrieves the gas unit rates for a tariff, in pence per kWh excluding and including VAT. Gas tariff codes start with G-1R and appear under single_register_gas_tariffs, so a dual fuel product exposes both an electricity and a gas tariff for the same grid supply point group. Newest first, with valid_from, valid_to, and payment_method. Public.
- Get Gas Standing Charges Retrieves the daily gas standing charge history for a tariff, in pence per day excluding and including VAT. Combine with Get Gas Standard Unit Rates to model a complete gas bill, remembering that gas meters record volume in cubic meters and Octopus converts that to kWh before applying the unit rate. Public.
Price Analysis
1- Find Cheapest Rate Slots Finds the cheapest half hour settlement periods for a half hourly electricity tariff such as Agile Octopus within a time window, so a flow can schedule car charging, a heat pump, or a dishwasher when power is cheapest. Reads the published standard unit rates for the window, sorts them by price including VAT, and returns the requested number of slots in ascending price order alongside the window average and the count of periods considered. Agile prices for the next day are usually published in the afternoon, so a window that runs past that point returns fewer slots than expected, and the count of periods considered is how a flow detects that.
Meter Points and Regions
2- Get Electricity Meter Point Looks up an electricity meter point by its 13 digit MPAN and returns the grid supply point group (gsp) that determines which regional tariff variant applies, together with the meter profile class. A gsp of _C means the London tariff code ending in -C. The MPAN is printed on an Octopus bill and appears in the Get Account response. Public.
- List Grid Supply Points Lists the Great Britain grid supply point groups, the 14 distribution regions that decide which regional variant of a tariff applies to an address. Supply a postcode to resolve just the group covering it, or leave it empty to list every group. The returned group_id is the final letter of the regional tariff codes. Public.
Account and Consumption
5- Get Account Retrieves an Octopus Energy account by account number, returning every property with its address, move in and move out dates, and the electricity and gas meter points registered there. Each meter point lists its MPAN or MPRN, the meters and serial numbers installed, and the tariff agreements with their codes and validity dates, which is the fastest way to discover the identifiers the consumption operations need. Requires an API key belonging to that account.
- Get Account Meter Points Flattens an account into a simple list of meter points, so a flow can feed the consumption operations without walking the nested account structure. Returns one entry per meter serial number with its fuel type, MPAN or MPRN, property address, and the tariff code currently in force. Meter points at properties the customer has moved out of are included and are identifiable by their movedOutAt value.
- Get Electricity Consumption Retrieves half hourly electricity consumption for one meter attached to an MPAN, in kWh rounded to 0.001. A smart meter in half hourly mode produces 48 records per day, and readings typically arrive with a lag of a day or so rather than in real time. Set Group By to aggregate into day, week, month, or quarter buckets. Requires an API key with access to the account that owns the meter, and export meters return the energy sent back to the grid.
- Get Gas Consumption Retrieves half hourly gas consumption for one meter attached to an MPRN. Smart gas meters (SMETS2) report in kWh while older SMETS1 meters report in cubic meters, so check the meter type before comparing figures against a bill. Set Group By to aggregate into day, week, month, or quarter buckets. Requires an API key with access to the account that owns the meter.
- Summarize Electricity Consumption Reads electricity consumption for a meter over a window and returns totals instead of a long list of intervals, which keeps a flow payload small when reporting on a week or a month. Returns total kWh, the number of intervals read, the mean interval, and the highest and lowest intervals with their timestamps. Set Group By to summarize daily or monthly buckets. Reads a single page of up to 25000 records, covering roughly 17 months of half hourly data. The interval count is what tells a flow whether the window it summarized was actually complete.
Frequently Asked Questions
What can FlowRunner do with Octopus Energy?
FlowRunner agents can run List Products, Get Product, and Get Electricity Standard Unit Rates in Octopus Energy, plus 13 more actions.
Does connecting Octopus Energy to FlowRunner require OAuth?
No. Octopus Energy connects to FlowRunner with basic authentication (a username and password), no OAuth flow required.
Can Octopus Energy trigger a FlowRunner workflow automatically?
Octopus Energy doesn't currently expose triggers in FlowRunner. It connects as an action step inside workflows started by another trigger.
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