The long-awaited transition to Market-wide Half-Hourly Settlement (MHHS) is now underway – with a view to migrate the many millions of electricity meters in the UK to half-hourly settlement by May 2027.
Already, close to 9 million meters have made the move. And today, our Data and Metering Services Team will start migrating our npower Business Solutions (nBS) supply customers onto the new MHHS systems.
But as the many questions we received during our recent MHHS webinar illustrate, there is still some confusion among business consumers about what this will mean for them – and what action to take.
For those with 100% Half-Hourly (HH) meters in your portfolio, the simple answer is not much. Your metering services will acquire new names, and some terms will change on your invoices. But other than that, you won’t notice any significant differences.
It’s customers who still have traditional Non-Half-Hourly (NHH) meters among their sites that will see the most changes.
Rather than meters being classified by meter measurement classification – HH, NHH etc – under MHHS, they will become classified by market segment.
HH meters and meters fitted with automated meter reading (AMR) technology will be looked after by the Advanced segment. Traditional (NHH) and Smart meters will be looked after by the Smart segment. And any unmetered supplies (UMS) will come under the Unmetered segment.
Current data collection and administration roles will also move across to Advanced, Smart or Unmetered Data Service roles.
This means for mixed portfolios with both HH and NHH meters, you will end up being served by two different meter service providers – or three if you also have UMS in your portfolio.
One of the most common queries about the transition to HH settlement relates to cost – and how metering costs will change.
And again, for HH meters, you probably won’t see much change. But for NHH meters, there are likely to be cost increases.
This is due to the increase in resources required to meet the new settlement performance standards and tighter timeframes. We’ll cover this in more detail in our next MHHS blog in June.
Under the terms of an electricity supply contract, a suitably-qualified MHHS meter agent must be appointed – likely once migration is underway. But if you don’t request a specific agent, your supplier will appoint one on your behalf – as happens currently.
However, it’s worth engaging with this process to ensure this meter agent is able to provide a good level of data accuracy, support and services to ensure you can turn your consumption data into actions that can save you money and help increase efficiencies.
This was explored in more detail during our recent MHHS online event, which you can access below in the chapter staring at 17.42.
The main message for businesses is, if you want to take advantage of the opportunities that MHHS will facilitate, then upgrade any traditional NHH meters.
If you do this via AMR, you can then access actual HH data to identify where to make savings, keep all your meters under the Advanced meter and data services umbrella, and be in a position to access time-of-use tariffs and other flexibility opportunities.
Upgrading to a Smart meter is also an option, but that will then mean you have two meter service providers if you also have HH meters in your portfolio.
If you want to hear questions to other common questions, and understand more about how to prepare for MHHS, you can watch our recent update on demand.
And if you’re still unsure about anything, our MHHS Hub has plenty of helpful information. Or get in touch here.