Half Hourly Settlement: The regulatory revolution industry is impatient for

With rising energy bills, government-backed initiatives to relieve energy costs and the Labour-proposed national energy generator, the strategic direction of the UK energy market is under increased scrutiny and speculation.

But in parallel, a major piece of regulatory reform is being carried out which will impact all participants. The market-wide Half Hourly Settlement (HHS) programme will see energy settled on a thirty-minute basis and is set to be a key catalyst for innovation around pricing and billing in the sector.

HHS is designed to steer the industry away from its reliance on estimates for settlement, and the laborious 14-month process for reconciling the disparity between the energy purchased by a supplier and customer demand. The programme, due to complete by October 2025, will rely on smart meters providing half-hour reads to ensure a precise picture of energy consumption – essential in a world of rising distributed energy systems and ever-increasing reliance on renewable energy resources.

Because aside from the practical benefits of improved accuracy, this revolutionary change will catapult the industry into the future;

• It will empower suppliers to innovate with smart time-of-use tariffs and prosumer propositions
• Support customers in the drive for energy efficiency
• Be a significant enabler in the race to net zero.

While regulatory change is often viewed with cynicism, many of our customers have expressed that they would even bring HHS forward if they could.

Nonetheless, there will be challenges to overcome. Suppliers will have to manage and store a huge surge of data, while keeping the mission-critical meter to cash processes running within the available processing window. Choosing an accurate, market-compliant software solution that can operate at rocket speed to handle the immense data load is critical.

As a global tech provider, our systems are primed for major regulatory change. We’ve recently worked with our Australian customers to slash their thirty-minute settlement down to just five minutes by developing our cloud-native Meter Data Services (MDS) platform to crunch exponentially higher volumes of data. With feedback from down under that “this thing goes like a rocket ship”, we’re prepared for the UK mandate.

When it comes to simplifying complex regulation changes, it’s all about taking control. Australian suppliers who transformed onto the cloud native MDS platform have reaped additional rewards. Automated processes, 75% reduction in time for meter data processing and invoicing, plus rapid scalability has supercharged both efficiency and innovation.

While we can’t fast forward the 2025 HHS mandate, we can collaborate with the industry today to build the best energy sector for tomorrow.

For further information, email: info@gentrack.com or visit: www.gentrack.com