Earth Notes: Octopus Innovation Centre Visit (2026)

Updated 2026-02-23.
Transition Town Kingston Energy Group visited the Slough UK site #OctopusEnergy #RAndD
About 10 of us from TTK EG and friends saw the logistics, training and R&D facilities (with some secret bits)!

From Octopus' email:

Octopus Energy have recently invested over £10m into a state of the art training facility and innovation centre in Slough (UK). This groundbreaking centre trains over 1,000 engineers a year and also provides a test bed for new products such as the Octopus Cosy 6 Air Source Heat Pump. There are also two homes to assist in retrofit training for solar and heat pump installations and an advanced manufacturing facility to enable high precision metalwork fabrication.

Tours normally take approximately 2 hours, Emma, our Low Carbon Housing Director, gives a very interesting and informative talk about everything "Octopus” (Octo-Verse as we call it) about what we do and what we can provide etc. Followed by a tour of our facilities which includes our training centre, innovation and testing area and our distribution centre. And then there's time at the end for any Q & A's.

Inside were quiet (anechoic) and hot/cold chambers, two houses like at Salford Energy House 2, labs with benches to tinker at, and some very nice precision low-volume quick-turnaround manufacturing gear.

semi anechoic chamber anechoic chamber left and heating and cooling chambers right seen from above warehouse logistics from upstairs Octopus Cosy heat pump with front panel open Octopus Cosy heat pump rear with inlet grille protected big pink slide between floors
(Click to expand each image...) (1) Amongst unexpected R&D features was a semi-anechoic chamber for very sensitive noise measurement of their and competitors' kit. The floor is concrete (and thus echoic!) to withstand heavy equipment. (2) Anechoic and heating/cooling (-60°C–+60°C) chambers seen from above from a gallery. (3) About five buildings away is the logistics building full of heat pumps etc, which we also visited and got to use the big pink slide in! (4) An Octopus Cosy 9kW heat-pump front with panel off. (5) The Cosy rear view, parked close to the house, protecting the inlet heat-exchanger grille. (6) The slide, with a member of TTK EG about to disappear into its maw!

We discussed various schemes such as the Zero Bills tariff, available for some retrofit properties now (typically 2013-or-newer English building regulations), the "Intelligent" Octopus tariffs that manage PV/battery/etc, and support for in-roof as well as on-roof PV.

There was a Sunamp heat battery spotted in the wild!

One point made and demonstrated is that many Octopus in-home heating controls now have physical clicky buttons (and indicators of state) to bolster users' confidence that their input as registered. (This echoes Radbot customer feedback.)

Another discussion topic was the ~18 month gap caused for the supply chain (and the consequent layoffs and other disruption) from cancellation of ECO4 without the Warm Homes Plan being in place.

The whole visit and discussion of a couple of hours was very candid.

There were a few bits that we were not allowed to photograph such as discontinued experiments/products.