Half-hourly and non-half-hourly meters: what changes

What half-hourly settlement means

A half-hourly settled supply reports consumption to the industry in forty-eight readings a day. Larger supplies, historically those above 100kW of maximum demand, are mandatorily half-hourly, and the rollout of advanced metering has pulled many smaller sites into the same regime.

Non-half-hourly supplies are settled against an assumed consumption shape for your profile class. Your actual pattern is averaged into a standard curve, which is fine when the site behaves like the average and expensive when it does not.

How pricing changes

On a half-hourly supply, more of your bill is itemised rather than bundled. Distribution charges, capacity charges, and the balancing and settlement elements appear as line items instead of being wrapped into a single unit rate.

That itemisation is not automatically worse. A site with a flat overnight-heavy profile often does better once it is priced on real data rather than an averaged assumption. A site that peaks hard during expensive periods will see that reflected honestly.

The data is the real prize

Half-hourly data tells you what your building does at four in the morning, what a bank holiday looks like, and how much of your load sits inside daylight hours. Without it, sizing a solar array is guesswork and specifying EV charging load management is impossible.

Request your data from your supplier or data collector as a matter of routine. Twelve months of readings turns most energy decisions from opinion into arithmetic.

Capacity charges deserve attention

Half-hourly sites are billed for the available capacity they reserve, whether or not they use it. Many businesses hold capacity agreed years ago for equipment they no longer run. Reviewing your agreed capacity against actual peak demand is often the fastest saving available on a half-hourly supply, and it does not require changing supplier at all.