Multi-Site Business Energy

Why Does Multi-Site Energy Get So Messy?

It usually happens gradually. You open a second shop, take over a unit or buy a business that comes with its own supplier, and each site keeps whatever contract it had. Before long, one site renews in March, two in September and another has quietly ended up on a rolling contract nobody chose.

The end of a contract is where the money goes. Some contracts automatically renew for a new fixed term, usually 12 months, and may be on a higher rate. Some suppliers move you onto out-of-contract rates, which are usually more expensive than fixed-term contracts. With several sites, the odds of one slipping through go up with every end date you have to remember, and we make sure none of them do.

There’s a time cost too. Every separate renewal means another round of bills to dig out, another set of prices to compare and another contract to sign off. If you’re a finance or facilities manager, doing that four or five times a year is a job in itself. Let us take it off your plate.

How Do You Line Up Your Contract End Dates?

Lining up your end dates isn’t right for every business, but where it is, we’ll always advise it. You can’t usually bring every contract onto the same date overnight, because a switch works when a site’s contract has ended or is about to. Most suppliers won’t let you switch before the end of a fixed-rate contract unless you’ve agreed a termination clause or pay an exit fee. So we can line the dates up as each contract comes to an end. Once you’ve told us each site’s end date, we’ll plan every switch for the right time.

Say you have four sites, with contracts ending in February, May, August and November. As each one comes up, we’ll help you pick a contract length that takes it to a common end date. Business energy contracts can last for up to five years, so there’s plenty of room to pick a term that fits. After one cycle, all four sites can end together and your next renewal is a single job.

Once your sites share an end date, you renew the whole portfolio at once, with one comparison and one sign-off. We’ll work out whether it suits your business, keep track of each site’s current end date and plan each renewal so the portfolio comes together where it can. If your board or finance committee needs to sign off a contract of this size, tell us when they meet and we’ll plan the renewal around it.

Getting the timing right doesn’t stop once your dates line up. We always advise arranging your next contract as early as possible, normally 12 months before your renewal date. That way you can take advantage of forward pricing, rather than the short-notice prices on offer in the last month or two, or the higher rates you can face if an energy contract ends with nothing new in place.

What Do We Need for Each Site?

Suppliers price each site on its own details, and you’ll need your annual consumption and your meter details before you sign. For each site, that means:

• Meter numbers: the MPAN (Meter Point Administration Number) identifies a site’s electricity supply and the MPRN (Meter Point Reference Number) does the same for gas. Both are printed on your bills, and you can find your MPAN and MPRN on a bill once you know where to look.
• Usage: how much electricity and gas each site uses in a year.
• Contract end dates: when each site’s current contract finishes, and with which supplier.
• Who the bill goes to: the company or billing entity each site sits under, so the portfolio is set up correctly.

You don’t have to pull all of that together yourself. A recent bill for each site is enough to get started, though it doesn’t always give us the whole picture, so ideally we’ll also ask you to sign a Letter of Authority. Our Letter of Authority (LOA) lets us help you, not make decisions for you. Help with your contracts, bills and supplier queries: yes. Enter into a contract on your behalf: no. Some brokers ask for a “level 2” LOA that lets them sign contracts for you. Ours is a level 1 LOA, so only you can agree a contract. With it in place, we gather the meter details, usage and end dates for every site ourselves, and you get more accurate prices as a result.

Where Do Half-Hourly Sites Fit?

Lots of multi-site businesses have a mix of meters: smaller sites on standard meters and larger ones, such as a warehouse or a production unit, on half-hourly meters. You don’t need to handle them separately. They can sit in the same portfolio and on the same renewal timetable, and we gather their usage data along with everything else before asking suppliers for prices.

Your other sites are heading the same way. Under Market-wide Half Hourly Settlement (MHHS), one of the biggest changes to the electricity retail market, every business meter’s electricity is settled on what it actually uses in each half hour of the day, with meter migrations due to finish by 7 May 2027. For your portfolio, more of your sites will be priced on when they use electricity as well as how much. So when we compare prices for your half-hourly meters and the rest of the portfolio, we look at each site’s usage pattern, not just its annual total.