Half-hourly settlement: what businesses should ask in 2026

Market-wide half-hourly settlement is changing how Great Britain's electricity market accounts for consumption. For a business owner, the useful starting point is understanding your meter, your data and your contract—not assuming your bill will automatically fall.

What does half-hourly settlement mean?

Settlement is the industry process for matching electricity supplied with consumption. Half-hourly settlement uses half-hour periods in that accounting process. It is useful to distinguish this behind-the-scenes activity from the price structure printed on a customer's bill.

Elexon's February 2026 update described the programme's planned migration completion in May 2027 and cutover to new settlement arrangements in July 2027. These were programme milestones, not a promise that every customer's meter or contract would change on the same day. See Elexon's February 2026 programme update.

Does this mean a new tariff?

Do not assume that settlement changes mean you have accepted a time-of-use tariff. Ask your supplier how your existing agreement will be billed and whether it is proposing any changes. Request the explanation in writing and keep it with your contract documents.

A tariff with different prices at different times is a commercial offer to assess on its own terms. The relevant question is how that price structure matches your actual operating pattern. A workshop with fixed production hours may have different options from a site with equipment that can run overnight.

Ask five practical questions

• What metering arrangement do we currently have, and are any actions needed from us?
• When do you expect our supply to migrate, and how will you communicate this?
• Can we access interval consumption data, and in what format?
• Are any contract, billing or service charges changing, and where is that documented?
• Who should we contact if the data or the first bill looks wrong?

Nominate a contact to collect the answers. Multi-site businesses should track responses by supply reference so that one site's position is not accidentally applied to the whole portfolio.

Use the data before changing operations

If you can obtain interval data, chart a representative week and identify opening, closing and production periods. Investigate unexpected overnight use with the facilities team. A consistent background load could be essential refrigeration or IT, so an unusual-looking chart is a prompt for investigation rather than proof of waste.

Before moving a process to a different time, account for staffing, safety, product quality and maintenance. Compare any proposed tariff against the complete consumption profile. A low price in one period can be offset by a higher price during your busiest hours.

Keep the next step proportionate

Start by gathering your latest bill, meter details and available data. Our business electricity team can discuss those documents, while energy account management can help organise ongoing reviews. Check the latest supplier and programme information before making a decision: this article records the position described in early 2026.