The small lines on your bill

Beneath the wholesale rate and the big network and policy charges sit four smaller lines that clients ask about and that many brokers cannot explain. Individually they are pennies against pounds, but two behave in ways that surprise people, one can be a credit rather than a cost, and only one of the four is genuinely negotiable.

Assistance for Areas with High Electricity Distribution Costs does what its name says. Distributing electricity across a sparse area costs more per customer than across a city, so the scheme collects a small amount from every supplier in Great Britain and pays it to Scottish Hydro Electric Power Distribution to hold distribution charges in the North of Scotland down. Your site pays it wherever it sits.

The rate for 2026/27 is 0.044269p per kWh, made up of a Shetland element of 0.012766p and 0.031503p for the rest of the scheme. It is flat: no regional variation, no day and night split, no capacity element. For a site using 500,000 kWh a year that is roughly £221 across the year.

It rose 8.0 per cent from 1 April 2026, from 0.040984p per kWh, driven by inflation on the assistance amounts and a £1m correction for under-recovery in the previous year. Two things catch people out. First, NESO publishes the final tariff in mid-July but it takes effect retrospectively from the previous 1 April, so a pass-through contract picks up a back-dated adjustment part-way through the year. Second, since April 2023 it is charged on gross demand with no netting of export, so a site with solar or a battery pays AAHEDC on everything it imports.

Elexon administers the Balancing and Settlement Code. Every half hour it compares what generators said they would produce and what suppliers said their customers would use against what actually happened, prices the difference, and moves the money. Without it there is no market.

The Elexon Board approved a budget of £143.7m for the year to 31 March 2027, the first year of a new three-year plan. It is recovered from market parties through funding shares weighted by market role and volume, and suppliers recover their share in end-user rates.

There is no published penny rate for this one. Unlike AAHEDC or TNUoS, Elexon and BSC costs are a funding share of an industry budget, arriving as a small aggregated line that suppliers name differently and break out to different depths. If someone quotes you a precise Elexon unit rate as though it were a set tariff, ask where it came from.

Residual Cashflow Reallocation Cashflow is the sum of energy imbalance charges reallocated across trading parties in proportion to metered volume. It is paid per megawatt hour and is capable of being positive or negative. It is not a levy. When it lands as a credit, it reduces the bill; when it lands as a cost, it adds to it.

Meter operator, data collector and data aggregator charges are commercially contracted with no published tariff, which makes them the one small line where the market can be tested. The roles are renamed under MHHS, covered in our MHHS sheet. Where a charge is negotiable, the question is whether the current arrangement is competitive, and that is a question of evidence, not assurance.

• Read the bill. Identify every line, including the small ones, and check each against the rate that should apply.
• Check the contract. Establish which charges are genuinely fixed in your product, on written evidence rather than assurance.
• Find the lever. Where a charge is negotiable, such as metering, test whether the current arrangement is competitive.
• Say what cannot change. Name the charges that are fixed by regulation, so effort goes where it can earn something.

This is general information, not advice on a specific contract. Whether a charge is fixed in your product depends on the supplier, the fuel and the product, and we confirm it per contract on written evidence.