Most of your bill is set by how your site is structured, not how much power it uses.
Before anything changes, we look at the way your site buys and uses electricity: the capacity your connection reserves, the hours you use power in, the charges for power that does no work, and the levies and taxes on top. This is what that looks like on an example site. Move the controls and the running total on the right updates.
Are you paying for capacity you never use?
Your agreed supply capacity is the amount of power your connection is reserved for, and you pay for it whether you use it or not — £2.39 per kVA a month on the tem quote. Set it too high and you pay for headroom you never touch. Set it too low and excess capacity charges apply on the extra, for the whole month you go over.
Could more of your power run at night?
On the tem quote, night-time power costs 16.898p a kWh against 20.619p in the day — 3.7p less for every kWh you can move. The cheaper hours are set by your meter — often around midnight to 7am. Not everything can move, but some loads rarely need to run in office hours: water heating, vehicle and battery charging, cold-store pre-cooling, batch processes.
Are you paying for power that does no work?
Motors, compressors and some older lighting draw reactive power: it does no useful work, but the network still has to carry it. How efficiently a site uses its supply is its power factor, from 0 to 1. Below about 0.95 — reactive power above a third of the energy used, assessed half-hour by half-hour — network operators charge for the excess. It arrives as a ‘reactive power’ pass-through line on your bill, and power factor correction equipment can reduce or remove it.
Are you paying levies and taxes you don’t need to?
A business electricity bill carries charges set by government and the networks, not by your supplier. Most are right; some are routinely wrong, or missing a relief the site qualifies for. These are the checks we run against your own bills.
Climate Change Levy
We checkA tax on each kWh of business electricity — 0.801p from April 2026. Some supplies are excluded, and sites with a Climate Change Agreement pay 92% less.
VAT rate
We checkMost businesses pay the standard 20%. Qualifying use — residential, a charity’s non-business use, or very low use — is charged at a lower rate, and mixed-use sites can split the bill.
Transmission (TNUoS) band
We checkA fixed transmission charge — £137.11 a month on the tem quote — set by a band based on your connection and agreed capacity.
EII exemption or RED Plus
We compareEnergy Intensive Industry exemptions and RED Plus can’t be combined: a business receiving EII exemptions isn’t eligible for P442.
The foundation: RED and RED Plus from tem
Most suppliers buy your power on the wholesale market and pass on its costs and markups. Through RED, tem prices your supply against its own portfolio of UK renewable generators instead, with the unit rate fixed for your contract. RED Plus then links a renewable generator to your usage under P442 (exempt supply), so certain non-commodity costs — government scheme levies — aren’t charged on that share of your usage. The saving is credited monthly, as its own line.
- Shown as a p/kWh benefit in your quote
- Credited monthly, as its own line on your invoice
- Included in every new tem contract — no extra paperwork
- Your supply is unchanged: power still arrives through the grid
| Categories | Unit rate | Est. monthly cost |
|---|---|---|
| Day fixed charges (7,679 kWh) | 20.619p/kWh | £1,583.33 |
| Day rate | 22.094p/kWh | £1,696.60 |
| RED Plus Benefit | −1.475p/kWh | −£113.26 |
| Night fixed charges (1,504 kWh) | 16.898p/kWh | £254.15 |
| Night rate | 17.992p/kWh | £270.60 |
| RED Plus Benefit | −1.094p/kWh | −£16.45 |
| Monthly charges | £155.49/month | £155.49 |
| Standing charges | £18.38/month | £18.38 |
| TNUoS – residual banded charges | 100% pass-through | £137.11 |
| Estimated monthly cost | £1,992.97 |