Supplier quotes
How to compare business electricity quotes in the UK
Unit rate alone is misleading. Here is a practical checklist — standing charges, capacity and pass-through items, VAT, contract dates and usage assumptions — before you switch.
Business electricity quotes are marketed with punchy p/kWh figures, but your landed monthly cost depends on standing charges, network‑related charges, policy levies, VAT treatment, metering arrangement and how the supplier assumes your consumption profile. Treat every comparison as a model — not a promise.
Start from current billed reality
Pull your latest half‑hourly or billing‑period summary alongside PDF invoices. You want actual standing charge behaviour and historically billed kWh bands — not a rough guess from last winter unless seasonality is explicitly modelled.
Understanding today's fixed daily fees matters — revisit standing charges explained before you weigh a quote that moves fees between fixed and variable buckets.
Beyond the headline unit rate
- Standing charge (p/day): multiplied across billed days — small deltas add up on continuous ops.
- Capacity / availability charges: larger supplies often carry charges unrelated to marginal kWh — confirm whether quotes include them transparently.
- Pass-through policy lines: items such as CCL or other policy riders may be recovered explicitly — ask whether figures are fixed, indexed or passthrough.
- VAT: default business electricity VAT is commonly 20% unless specific reliefs apply — quotes should state net vs gross assumptions.
Contract length, end dates and renewal traps
Capture contract start assumptions, end dates and whether quoted rates expire into deemed/out‑of‑contract terms. Multi‑site portfolios should confirm whether the supplier averages pricing or prices meters independently.
How to compare estimates honestly
Build a simple matrix: current billed averages vs quoted averages across standing + commodity + explicit levies. Document usage assumptions (annual kWh, peak/off‑peak split, Triad sensitivity if relevant). Any supplier estimate should spell out what happens if actual consumption diverges.
Property operators juggling supply points should also read organising bills across multiple properties.
Outside half-hourly power, use the same baseline mindset for broadband renewals, mobile bills and trade waste invoices — compare new offers against extracted monthly charges or service terms where the document includes enough data.
Where UtilityPilot fits
UtilityPilot is being designed so structured quotes can sit next to extracted tariff lines from bills you already uploaded — reducing repetitive phone explanations. Today, use extraction outputs as your baseline snapshot and keep supplier paperwork as the legal reference.
We never guarantee savings or automatic switching; we help you align figures before you decide.