Energy bills set to rise up to 8%.

Ofgem confirmed Wednesday 26th August that energy bills will rise again from 1 October. The headline figure understates it for most households and the part of the bill growing fastest over the rest of the decade is not the part anyone is discussing.

Ofgem announced today that the energy price cap will rise by 4% for the three months from 1 October to 31 December 2026. A typical household paying by direct debit for both gas and electricity will pay £1,723 a year, up £60 from the current level of £1,663.

The rise is driven by the wholesale market. Ofgem points to an 11% increase in wholesale energy costs over the past three months, feeding through into the unit rates and standing charges the cap governs.

The increase is a gas increase

The detail that has had less attention is where the money is going. Gas bills rise 8% from October. Households with no gas supply see an increase of under 1%.

That gap is the whole story for anyone weighing up how a home is heated. A house running on a gas boiler is directly exposed to the component of the bill rising fastest. A house running on a heat pump is not and it carries no gas standing charge, the daily fee a gas-connected household pays before it has turned anything on.

Waiting for it to fall is the weaker bet

The instinct is to assume this passes. Energy prices spiked, and spikes subside.

The composition of the bill suggests otherwise. Analysts at Cornwall Insight have flagged that wholesale energy, long the dominant driver of the cap, is forecast to fall below 40% of it and remain there for the rest of the decade. The growth is in the other components: charges for operating and maintaining the electricity and gas networks, and new levies including the Nuclear Regulated Asset Base charge funding the next generation of power stations.

Those costs are not weather, and they are not the wholesale market. They are infrastructure being paid for over decades, through everybody's bill, and they do not fall away when gas markets settle.

Ofgem also resets the cap every three months (January, April, July and October) announcing each level roughly five weeks ahead. The January to March figure is due in November, and Cornwall Insight currently expects a further rise, while stressing that its view is likely to move several times before Ofgem confirms it.

Whichever way January lands, the pattern holds: a household on a standard variable tariff faces four resets a year, indefinitely, with no way to plan around them.

What this changes at a gs8 development

Nothing, which is the point.

Every home at Carpenters Yard in Thornwood and Medburn Yard in Radlett is built to the Octopus Zero Bills standard. Roof-integrated solar generates the household's electricity through the day. A home battery stores what isn't used, covering evenings and darker months. An air source heat pump handles heating and hot water. Octopus manages the system in the background, matching the home's demand against generation and grid conditions.

The equipment is specified as standard and included in the purchase price. It is not an upgrade, an add-on or a subscription, it belongs to the house.

The result is a contractual guarantee: residents pay nothing for the energy their home uses, and no standing charges, for up to 10 years* from the day the tariff begins.

That guarantee does not adjust when the cap adjusts. It is not a fixed tariff that re-prices at the end of its term, and it is not a discount off a rising number. It is the number itself, set at zero.