Starter guide to MHHS for businesses

Here’s our starter guide to MHHS for businesses so you can prepare, protect your data & optimise your experience.

Market-wide Half Hourly Settlement (MHHS) will see the biggest change to electricity data & metering in the UK and you will be affected.

We’ve laid out:

• the basics of what settlement is
• what MHHS is
• when it’s happening
• key changes you’ll need to learn
• essential questions you need to ask your data & meter partners now so you can prepare properly.

Starter guide: settlement basics

The settlement process determines whether a supplier has purchased too much or too little electricity from a generator.

It then handles payments between them.

Currently, there are two types of settlement:

• Non Half Hourly (NHH) which uses estimated profiles
• Half Hourly (HH) which uses actual consumption data recorded by the meter

The performance standards and data timelines are much tighter in HH for data & meter providers.

For MHHS new settlement standards mean more data, faster.

For MHHS, the settlement standard will be 99% actual data delivered for settlement in 5-7 working days.  

Currently, NHH settled sites have 14 months to provide actual data for settlement, so you can see what a huge change in delivery timescale this will be.

All data & metering agents will have to perform to this new level.

MHHS will move all electricity supplies to the new HH settlement model

There are 30 million NHH sites and 300k HH sites in the UK.

The plan by Ofgem is to move all of these into a new MHHS operating system.

It’s easily the biggest change in the UK’s electricity industry since the mid-90s.

All electricity supplies will be included: HH, NHH, Unmetered, domestic and commercial.

And it’s mandatory.

Learn more: 7 MHHS changes you must know | Market-wide Half Hourly Settlement

April 2025 to October 2026 timetable

Preparation by industry agents has been happening for a while.

For end users, suppliers will start to migrate meters from April 2025, with the deadline of October 2026.

Each supplier will have a different timing for their MPANs to migrate.

This means you’ll start to see your meters migrate over to the new HH settlement operation model from April 2025.

No more NHH and HH, it’ll be Advanced or Smart

The market will no longer be split by HH or NHH settlement types.

Instead, the meter type you have installed will become the most important factor.

And there’s a new terminology that reflects this.

• HH or NHH Data Collector (HH DC or NHH DC) is replaced by Advanced Data Services (ADS) or Smart Data Services (SDS)
• HH or NHH Meter Operator (HH MOP or NHH MOP) is replaced by Metering Services Advanced (MSA) and Metering Services Smart (MSS)
• Meter Operator (MOP) will also be called a Meter Operating Agent (MOA)

Prepare your portfolio of meters now

1. Understand your meter portfolio

• Find out what meter types you have
• How many are Advanced, Smart (aka SMETS), Traditional or Unmetered?
• Ask your data, meter agents and supplier if they can cover all your meters for MHHS migration
• Ask your data & metering provider(s) how they plan to migrate your meters. Will you need site visits? How will HH de-appointments be managed?
• Ask what their capability is to handle your all your specific makes & models of meters as well – not every data provider can handle all meter models

2. Look for support

Don’t go it alone, lean on energy experts like us to keep you informed and in control.

Speak to your supplier, data & meter agents about what their plans are

Understand the new terminology so you can understand contracts, quotes & anything else that may come your way

3. Choose Advanced (AMR) over Smart (SMETS )

You may wish to prepare your meters now for migration in which case we’d always recommend Advanced (aka AMR) over Smart (SMETS) for businesses.

• You can opt-out supplier of Smart/SMETS meter roll out
• Instead you can request Advanced/AMR meters
• You can put AMR contracts in place with your preferred provider so you’re meters will seamlessly migrate through MHHS

4. Start to asses how you’ll extract value from the data

With more data visibility than before you’ll likely find new ways to save costs & carbon.

• How can you be more flexible in your energy use after MHHS?
• What Time of Use tariffs will be available to you?
• What loads can you shift away from peak times?
• How will you monitor this?
• What data analytics do you have to inform your decisions?

Data continuity is key.

In summary, whether you have all HH meters already, or a mix of NHH, HH and Traditional meters, everything will migrate to the new MHHS operating system from April 2025.

After MHHS, you’ll see more data faster and have more opportunities for saving costs.

Using a trusted data & metering partner to guide you is key – don’t do this alone.

MHHS represents a huge change in the UK’s electricity industry  – so plan your journey, take control and enjoy data continuity with an independent data provider.