The GB electricity market is partway through its biggest reform in more than 25 years, and most business customers haven’t noticed. Around 80% of meters are expected to be on the new half-hourly settlement arrangements by October. Migration finishes in May 2027, when every meter in the country will be settled on actual half-hourly data. Elexon expects to process up to 500 billion readings a year once the system is fully live.
So far, Market-wide Half Hourly Settlement (MHHS) has mostly been treated as a technical programme. It is sponsored by Ofgem, delivered by Elexon, and forecast to deliver between £1.6bn and £4.5bn in consumer benefit. There is a commercial side too. Once every meter settles on its own half-hourly data, suppliers can price each customer against their actual usage shape. Energy buying becomes more individual, and harder to compare.
That should be good news for brokers. The more tailored pricing becomes, the more clients need someone who can tell a fair price from a poor one. The large half-hourly sites that already settle this way have always leaned on consultants for exactly that reason. But it raises the bar. Two tenders are only comparable if you can read the usage profile behind them, and a client only sees their own data if someone gives them a tool to see it with. Energy UK expects new tariffs to be built on the half-hourly data as migration completes.
“Procurement will always matter, but on its own it’s no longer enough,” said Josh Coleman, head of indirect channel at Tritility. “The renewal letter and a spreadsheet keeps working until a competitor sits down with your client, pulls up their half-hourly data and shows them what running the air conditioning flat out through the 4pm to 7pm peak is costing them. A good rate on the last contract won’t hold the relationship after that conversation.”
Tritility has published a white paper on the question, written by Coleman. It sets out the MHHS timeline in plain English and looks at how client expectations are likely to change as half-hourly data becomes normal, on everything from billing accuracy to carbon reporting. It then asks the harder commercial question: can a procurement-only offer keep hold of its clients?
The second half of the paper deals with the practical question of how a broker becomes the one providing that access. It looks at how to put live consumption, cost and carbon data in front of every client, under the broker’s own brand, without building a tech stack or paying software licences.
“We speak to TPIs every week who can see this coming but can’t see a practical way in. That’s who we wrote it for,” said Coleman. “If your clients only hear from you at renewal, MHHS will give your competitors plenty of reasons to call them in between.”
Will MHHS be the end of the procurement-only TPI? is free to download at partners.tritility.com/mhhs
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