Business Energy Case Study: A Bristol Industrial Switch

Ask most business owners what unit rate they are paying for their gas or electricity and they haven't got a clue. It is not that they don't care. It is that the bill lands, the direct debit goes out, and nobody has the time to sit down with a spreadsheet and work out whether the number on the page is a fair one.

This business energy case study follows one industrial unit on the edge of Bristol. It is a small operation - a workshop, a few machines, a handful of staff - and like a lot of sites in the South West it had drifted onto a contract that no longer fitted the way it worked. Nothing dramatic happened. No supplier did anything wrong. The contract simply stopped being the right contract, and nobody noticed for the best part of a year.

The business details have been anonymised, but the pattern will be familiar to anyone running a unit in Bristol, Bath or the surrounding industrial estates.

The starting point: what the industrial unit was paying

The site was on a fixed electricity deal taken out three years earlier, when the workshop ran a single shift. Since then it had added a second machine line and a small cold store, and its consumption had gone up by roughly a third. The bill followed, but the contract did not.

Three things stood out straight away:

• The unit rate was noticeably higher than the rates being quoted to similar-sized sites that same month.
• The standing charge was set at a level you would expect on a much smaller supply.
• The contract had been rolling on out-of-contract rates for nearly eleven months without anyone realising.

That last point is the expensive one. When a fixed term ends and you do nothing, most suppliers move you onto their default out-of-contract rates. They are perfectly legal, they are usually well above market, and because the bill still arrives looking the same, they are easy to miss. The site had effectively been buying its power on the most expensive terms available, every single day, for almost a year.

The signs it was on the wrong contract

The owner's original reason for getting in touch was simple frustration - the bills had crept up and the explanations from the supplier made no sense. But once you know what to look for, a contract that has stopped fitting tends to show itself in the same handful of ways:

• Consumption has changed since you signed, but the contract terms haven't.
• The fixed term has quietly ended and you're on a rolling rate.
• The meter, the capacity or the supply type no longer matches what the site actually does.
• Nobody has compared your rate to the market since you first signed.
• Your renewal letter arrived, you put it in a pile, and the pile won.

If two or more of those sound familiar, there is a good chance you are paying more than you need to.

What the broker review uncovered

A review of the site started with the bill and worked backwards. No jargon, no guesswork - just what the paperwork actually said and what the market was offering that week.

Contract timing

The first finding was timing. The site was outside its fixed term, so there was nothing to break and no exit fee to worry about. That meant a switch could be arranged immediately rather than waiting for a renewal window. As it happened, wholesale prices for the following quarter were also softer than they had been when the original deal was signed, which made the comparison unusually straightforward.

Meter fit

The second finding was the meter. The supply had originally been set up around a much lighter load, and the standing charge reflected a capacity that no longer suited the site's pattern of use. This is a common one on industrial units that have grown. Nobody changes the meter arrangement because nobody thinks to ask, and the site quietly pays for a setup that was designed for a different business.

The offers on the table

The third finding was the market itself. Because the site was free to move, the review could put several suppliers side by side on the same day: unit rate, standing charge, contract length, and what happens at renewal. Some quotes looked cheap on the headline rate and then made it back on the standing charge. Others fixed a longer term at a price that ignored how the site's usage might keep growing. Comparing the whole picture, rather than one number, is where the savings usually hide.

The result after switching

The switch moved the site onto a contract that matched how it actually operates: a rate closer to the market for a supply of that size, a standing charge that reflected the real load, and a fixed term the owner could plan around.

Across the first year, the difference between the old out-of-contract pricing and the new agreed position came to a four-figure sum - money that went straight back into the business rather than out of the door to a supplier for no extra benefit. There was no gap in supply, no downtime, and no paperwork for the owner to chase.

The simple steps that got it there, with no fees

Nothing about this needed technical knowledge from the business owner. The route looked like this:

1. Send in a recent bill. That is the whole starting point - a photo or a copy of the last invoice tells the story.
2. Get the review back, usually within 24 hours, with the options laid out in plain English.
3. Decide on the offer that fits. No pressure to take the cheapest headline rate if a different term suits the site better.
4. Let the switch be arranged. The supplier and the paperwork get handled, and the supply carries on as normal.

The service costs the business nothing. Suppliers pay the broker for bringing them the contract, which is why there are no fees to the site and no reason to feel that you are being sold to. You are simply getting someone to do the dull part properly.

What this means for your business

The unit in this business energy case study did not get a miracle result. It got the ordinary one that most mis-sold-on-timing sites get: a contract that had quietly drifted out of date, a review that took one bill to start, and a switch that put the numbers back where they should be.

If your fixed term has ended, if your site has changed since you signed, or if you simply could not say what your unit rate is right now, that is worth an hour of somebody else's time.

Upload your latest bill and Equal Payments will compare the market, come back within 24 hours, and arrange the switch if you want it - free, in plain English, and without the call-centre runaround.