Market-wide Half-Hourly Settlement (MHHS) is one of the most significant electricity market reforms in the UK. While it might seem technical, the commercial implications are very real.

Here’s what it means for your bottom line.

  1. More accurate energy bills

MHHS ensures all electricity usage is settled on a half-hourly basis, meaning your bills will reflect exactly when and how you use power. No more estimations. This improves transparency and allows for greater confidence in cost forecasting and budgeting.

  1. Opportunities to cut costs through energy flexibility

With detailed half-hourly data, you’ll be able to identify when your organisation consumes the most energy, and potentially shift usage to cheaper, off-peak periods. This opens the door to things like time-of-use tariffs and demand-side response schemes, where adjusting consumption can lead to lower costs and, in some cases, financial incentives.

  1. Better procurement strategies

Greater visibility of consumption patterns puts you in a stronger negotiating position when securing energy contracts. Understanding your actual usage trends allows for better procurement, locking in the best rates at the right times, and avoiding unnecessary premiums.

  1. The cost of inaction: upgrading infrastructure

While there may be upfront costs to ensure your metering systems are MHHS-compliant (i.e. half-hourly capable smart meters), this should be viewed as a strategic investment. The cost of doing nothing could easily result in missed savings, inefficient operations, and being locked out of future cost-saving schemes.

  1. Long-term business resilience

By aligning with MHHS, your organisation positions itself for long-term economic resilience. Granular data enables operational efficiencies, supports energy reduction targets, and strengthens your ESG credentials, all of which have influence on everything from investor confidence and customer loyalty to supply-chain compliance and competitive differentiation.

MHHS is scheduled to go live in October 2026. However, the preparation phase is already well underway, and many suppliers and large energy users are actively working to upgrade systems and processes to be ready ahead of time. The transition period leading up to 2026 will see increased rollout of half-hourly capable metering and more detailed consumption data being captured and shared across the market.

With the testing phase well underway, commencement of the migration phase is due from September 2025 across an 18-month window – the time in which suppliers can move customers to new settlement arrangements, so businesses should ensure they understand and can leverage the changes that the MHHS Programme can deliver for them.

There is huge benefit to acting in advance, to assess metering readiness, review energy strategies, and begin making the most of more accurate, time-based consumption data.

Stephanie Palmer, Pricing Team Leader