Understanding and Comparing Time-of-Use Business Energy Tariffs

This guide explains what ToU tariffs are, which UK suppliers have them available, how they compare, and how much a business could realistically save by load shifting. It also covers Economy 7, Economy 10, and the newer half-hourly deals, the meter you need, and a major change already underway that will make ToU tariffs relevant to far more businesses than they are today.

What is a Time-of-Use (ToU) Tariff?

A time-of-use tariff splits our working day into pricing windows and charges a different rate for each one. Instead of one flat unit rate, you pay less in low-demand periods (typically overnight) and more when the grid is under strain (typically late afternoon and early evening).

The logic is straightforward. Electricity is more expensive to generate and supply when demand is high, because the grid has to call on costlier power stations and pay higher network charges to keep the lights on. Suppliers pass some of that cost difference on to customers who can prove, via their meter, when they actually used their power.

For a business, the appeal is simple: if you can shift some of your energy-hungry activity into the cheap window, you pay less for the same amount of electricity. If you can't shift much, a ToU tariff may cost you more than a standard fixed-rate deal, because the peak-rate unit price is usually higher than a flat tariff's rate to compensate for the cheaper off-peak hours.

Economy 7, Economy 10, and Advanced Multi-Rate Deals

There are three broad generations of time-of-use products on the UK market, and it's worth understanding the differences before you compare quotes.

Economy 7

Economy 7 is the oldest and most widely available ToU tariff. It gives you a cheaper unit rate for seven consecutive hours overnight, commonly somewhere between 10 pm and 8:30 am depending on your supplier and region, and a higher rate for the remaining 17 hours. It was originally built around storage heaters and immersion water tanks, but it also suits any business that can run heavy equipment, batch processing, or EV charging overnight.

Ofgem estimates that around 42% of a typical Economy 7 customer's usage falls in the off-peak window. That figure matters because it's the benchmark for whether the tariff is worth it: if your business uses much less than that overnight, the higher daytime rate will likely outweigh the saving.

Economy 10

Economy 10 works on the same principle but spreads 10 off-peak hours across three windows: typically a few hours overnight, an afternoon slot, and an early evening slot. That structure suits businesses with a more varied usage pattern than pure overnight running, for example a site that could pre-heat or pre-cool during a quiet afternoon lull as well as overnight.

Fewer suppliers actively promote Economy 10 to new customers today, and some comparison tools struggle to model its three-rate structure accurately, so it's worth asking a broker to check figures rather than relying on an online calculator.

Advanced Multi-Rate and Half-Hourly Deals

The newest generation goes further than a simple day/night split. These tariffs price electricity in 30-minute blocks, tracking the wholesale market (or a red/amber/green banding derived from it) far more closely than Economy 7 or 10 ever could. Octopus Energy's business Agile product is the clearest UK example: it reprices electricity every half hour, and businesses that avoid the 4 pm to 7 pm peak window can save in the region of 4 to 8 pence per kWh compared with their average rate. Businesses with on-site solar or a battery can occasionally see rates fall to near zero, or even negative, during periods of oversupply.

These deals need a genuinely smart meter feeding half-hourly data back to the supplier, and they suit businesses with either a flexible, controllable load or on-site generation to play with. They're less forgiving of a ‘set and forget’ approach than Economy 7, because the cheap and expensive windows move around and aren't fixed at a single time every day.

What Meter You Need for Time-of-Use Pricing

Your meter decides which tariffs you can even be quoted for, so it's worth checking this before you get into comparing prices.

• Economy 7 or Economy 10 meters are dedicated multi-rate meters that record day and night usage on separate registers. They work, but they're an older technology, and some comparison services can't model Economy 10's three-rate structure.

• Smart meters (SMETS2, or an upgraded SMETS1) can support Economy 7-style tariffs and the newer half-hourly products. It sends readings automatically, usually every 30 minutes, which removes the need for manual reads and is the minimum requirement for advanced multi-rate deals like Octopus’s Agile Business.

• Half-hourly (HH) meters are common on larger sites, already measure consumption in 30-minute blocks and report it to the supplier. This is standard for businesses using more than 100,000 kWh a year and is a prerequisite for the most granular time-of-use products.

If your supplier can't get reliable half-hourly data from your meter, it generally can't offer you a genuine time-of-use deal. Get in touch and ask directly what your meter is capable of before comparing rates. It's also worth noting that a supplier can move you onto a more expensive default tariff if you refuse a smart meter upgrade where one is a condition of a small business contract, so check the terms carefully.

Why Not Every Business Uses a Time-of-Use Tariff

Roughly a fifth of small business electricity meters in the UK are still non-half-hourly, non-smart, and settled on the traditional profile basis. For those sites, ToU pricing simply isn't available yet, whatever the potential saving might look like on paper. That's about to change, and it's the biggest shift in this market that most business owners haven't heard of yet.

Marketwide Half-Hourly Settlement (MHHS), an Ofgem-led reform delivered by Elexon, is migrating every electricity meter in Great Britain, domestic and business, onto half-hourly settlement. The migration started in October 2025, and suppliers are expected to have moved the majority of meters across by October 2026, with full completion by May 2027. In practical terms, this means: if your business doesn't have access to a genuine time-of-use tariff today because of your meter or settlement type, that barrier is being removed industry-wide over the next year or so, whether you ask for it or not.

Ofgem estimates the reform will deliver a total consumer benefit of between £1.6 billion and £4.5 billion across the period to 2045, largely by making the market more efficient and opening up flexible tariffs to more customers. It's worth putting a note in the diary to revisit your tariff options once your supplier confirms your meter has migrated.

How Do UK Business Time-of-Use Tariffs Stack Up?

Business energy pricing is bespoke rather than published like a domestic price list, so treat the figures below as indicative ranges rather than a quote. As of mid-2026, general business electricity unit rates run from roughly 26p to 30p per kWh depending on business size and usage, with standing charges from around 45p a day for small sites to over 140p a day for larger ones.

Two things stand out from comparing these products. First, only a handful of suppliers currently offer a genuinely dynamic, half-hourly-priced business tariff. Most of the market still runs on the Economy 7 model, which is simpler to understand but less rewarding for businesses with real flexibility. Second, none of these is one-size-fits-all: the right choice depends entirely on your usage pattern, which is why a side-by-side comparison against your actual half-hourly data (where available) beats comparing headline rates alone.

How Much Load Shifting Can Actually Save You

These are illustrative examples based on the rate ranges and off-peak proportions described above, not a quote from any specific supplier. Treat them as a way to judge whether a ToU tariff is worth investigating for your own consumption pattern, and always check exact rates and windows with a supplier or broker before switching.

1. A bakery running appliances overnight

A bakery uses 20,000 kWh a year, with 45% of that already falling between 10 pm and 6 am for dough proving and baking ahead of the morning rush.

• On a standard flat tariff at 27p/kWh: annual electricity cost of roughly £5,400.

• On an Economy 7-style tariff with a night rate around 15p/kWh and a day rate around 30p/kWh (reflecting the higher day rate that funds the cheap window): the 45% used overnight costs about £1,350, and the 55% used in the day costs about £3,300, for a total of roughly £4,650.

• Saving: around £750 a year, purely from a usage pattern the bakery already had, before making any further changes.

2. A logistics depot charging an EV fleet

A depot with five electric vans uses 15,000 kWh a year on charging alone, currently plugged in as drivers finish their afternoon rounds between 4 pm and 6 pm, squarely in the peak window.

• On a standard flat tariff at 27p/kWh: charging costs roughly £4,050 a year.

• Shifted onto an overnight charging schedule (10 pm to 6 am) using timers, on an Economy 7-style night rate of 15p/kWh: charging costs roughly £2,250 a year.

• Saving: around £1,800 a year, achieved with no change to the vans themselves, just a change in when they plug in.

3. An office avoiding peak times

A small office uses 12,000 kWh a year fairly evenly across the working day, including roughly 15% (1,800 kWh) that currently falls in the 4 pm to 7 pm peak window from lighting, computers, and the last hour of HVAC before staff leave.

• If the office reschedules non-essential loads (server backups, dishwasher and appliance cycles, EV charging for any staff cars) out of that window and saves an average of 6p/kWh on the shifted usage, based on the 4 to 8p/kWh saving typical of avoiding peak pricing on Agile-style tariffs, that's a saving of roughly £108 a year on the shifted portion alone.

• The saving looks modest here because the office's peak-window usage is a small share of its total. This is the pattern to watch for: the size of the saving is driven by how much of your usage you can move, not just by the tariff you're on.

The common thread across all three examples is that the businesses saving the most are the ones with either a big overnight-shiftable load (the bakery and the depot) or active, ongoing management of a flexible load (the office). A business that can't shift meaningful usage away from the day, or away from the evening peak, won't see savings anywhere near these figures, and may pay more.

Which Businesses Suit a Time-of-Use Tariff?

Good Fits

• Manufacturers and workshops that can schedule batch processes, kilns, presses, or other heavy equipment to run overnight.

• Cold storage and food production sites that can pre-cool or pre-chill during off-peak hours and coast on retained temperature during the day.

• Businesses with EV fleets where charging can simply be timed to start after staff leave.

• Sites with on-site solar or other generation, which can combine export tariffs with time-of-use import pricing to maximise the value of self-generated power.

• Businesses with active energy management, whether that's a facilities manager checking the next day's Agile prices or a building management system doing it automatically.

Not So Good Fits

• Shops, cafes, and hospitality businesses whose trading hours are fixed by footfall and can't be moved to the cheap overnight window. If your busiest hours are also the grid's busiest hours, a ToU tariff usually costs more, not less.

• Offices with a conventional 9-to-5 routine where almost all usage sits in the standard daytime rate band.

• Microbusinesses without the time to manage usage, since a ‘set and forget' ToU tariff without genuine off-peak usage tends to underperform a simple fixed-rate deal.

• Businesses on older Economy 10 meters, where getting an accurate like-for-like comparison is difficult.

If a time-of-use tariff isn't right for you, the more suitable alternative is usually a straightforward fixed-rate contract sized to your actual annual consumption, ideally with a contract length matched to your usage band (shorter fixes tend to suit sub-100,000 kWh sites, while larger users often do better on flexible or pass-through contracts where supplier margins are thinner). A broad market comparison will show you where you sit against current rates without assuming a load-shifting capability you don't have.

How to Get a Compatible Meter Installed

If your current meter can't support a time-of-use tariff, getting one upgraded is usually free and follows a similar process across suppliers:

1. Confirm what you have. Check your bill or meter casing for SMETS1 or SMETS2, or ask your supplier directly whether your meter is smart-enabled, Economy 7/10, or half-hourly.

2. Request an upgrade. Suppliers are obliged to offer a free smart meter installation on request for eligible small businesses. Larger or half-hourly sites may need a meter operator (MOP) contract.

3. Book an engineer visit. Installation typically involves a site visit for safety checks, and you'll usually need to be present.

4. Allow time for the connection to ‘settle’. It typically takes around two weeks after installation for a supplier to start reliably receiving half-hourly readings, after which you can be moved onto a time-of-use tariff.

5. Check the MHHS timeline for your supplier. Given the market-wide migration already underway, ask your supplier when your specific meter or site is scheduled to move to half-hourly settlement, since this affects when new tariff options become available to you.

How to Switch to a ToU Tariff Using a Comparison Service

Business energy isn't quoted from a published price list the way domestic tariffs are, so the fastest route to an accurate time-of-use comparison is usually a comparison service that can pull your actual consumption data rather than a generic estimate. Using a service like BusinessComparison, the process typically looks like this:

1. Share your supply details. Your MPAN (electricity) or MPRN (gas), current supplier, and recent bills let a comparison service pull your real usage pattern, including any existing day/night or half-hourly split.

2. Get like-for-like quotes. Rather than comparing headline unit rates, ask for quotes modelled against your actual historic half-hourly or day/night usage, so the potential saving reflects your real pattern rather than a generic assumption.

3. Check the off-peak windows. Two Economy 7 tariffs with the same headline off-peak rate can have off-peak windows that start and end at different times. If your equipment runs from 11 pm, a window that starts at midnight loses you an hour of cheap electricity.

4. Confirm meter compatibility before committing, especially if the tariff you want depends on a smart meter you don't yet have.

5. Review contract length and terms. Time-of-use products are often available on the same 12 to 36 month fixed terms as standard tariffs, so check exit fees before switching, particularly if you're mid-contract with your current supplier.

Are ToU Tariffs More Environmentally Friendly?

Not automatically, and this is worth being honest about rather than assuming it's a given. A time-of-use tariff by itself doesn't generate any more or less renewable electricity; it simply prices electricity differently depending on when you use it.

That said, there's a genuine environmental link, because the times when electricity is cheapest on these tariffs often overlap with times when the grid's electricity mix is cleanest. Overnight, and increasingly during the middle of the day when solar and wind output is high, a greater share of the electricity on the grid comes from low-carbon sources, and demand (and therefore wholesale price) tends to be lower. Half-hourly, wholesale-linked tariffs like Agile Business track this relationship more closely than a fixed 7-hour Economy 7 window does, because they respond directly to real-time supply and demand rather than a fixed clock time.

So the fair way to put it is this: a business that load shifts onto a time-of-use tariff to save money will, more often than not, also end up using a somewhat greener mix of electricity as a side effect, particularly on tariffs priced against live wholesale or grid carbon data. But a company that switches to a time-of-use tariff and doesn't actually shift its usage gets neither the cost saving nor a meaningfully greener bill, since it's still drawing from the same average grid mix at the same times as before.

Time-of-Use Tariff Myths

"A time-of-use tariff is always cheaper"

Not true. The saving depends entirely on how much of your usage you can move into the cheap window. A business with a fixed daytime pattern and no flexible load can end up paying more, because the peak-rate unit price on these tariffs is usually higher than a standard flat rate to fund the cheaper off-peak hours.

"You need to use lots of energy to get a time-of-use deal"

Not necessarily, though it has historically been easier for half-hourly, high-usage sites. Economy 7 and Economy 10 have long been available to small businesses on ordinary meters, and the market-wide half-hourly settlement rollout is extending genuine time-of-use eligibility to far more small business meters over the next year.

"Economy 7 and Economy 10 are the same thing"

They're related but not identical. Economy 7 gives seven off-peak hours, usually overnight only. Economy 10 gives ten off-peak hours split across three windows, including some daytime availability, which can suit a different usage pattern.

"Having a smart meter means you get cheap energy off peak"

No. A smart meter is usually a requirement for time-of-use pricing, but plenty of businesses have a smart meter and are still on a standard flat-rate tariff. Having the meter is the enabler, not the tariff itself.

"Half-hourly settlement is only for big businesses"

This was true, but it's changing. The MHHS programme is migrating all business electricity meters onto half-hourly settlement by around October 2026, with full completion by May 2027, which is expected to widen access to time-of-use pricing well beyond the large, half-hourly-metered sites that have historically been the main users of these tariffs.

Time-of-Use Tariff Takeaways

Time-of-use tariffs reward businesses that can move consumption to cheaper hours. The savings in the worked examples above (broadly £750 to £1,800 a year on the patterns above) show why it's worth checking your usage data against a time-of-use quote. For firms with little flexible load, a carefully selected fixed-rate tariff is usually the safer bet.

If you're not sure where your company sits, compare your current rates against the market and check what your meter is actually capable of before you decide either way.