Am I overpaying for business energy?

Commercial energy in the UK is a quote-only market. There is no price list. Two identical businesses, on the same day, can sign contracts at meaningfully different rates, and neither will ever know. That opacity is not an accident; it is how the intermediary layer gets paid.

Where the cost hides

Three structural costs sit between you and the wholesale price:

1. Undisclosed broker commission. Most brokers are paid by the supplier through an uplift on your unit rate. You pay it on every kWh, for the life of the contract, without seeing it.
2. Mismatch between tariff and usage. A flat rate charged against a business that uses energy at predictable times pays for flexibility it never uses. The gap between how you are charged and how you consume is a real cost, invisible on the bill.
3. Default rates. Deemed and out-of-contract rates apply when a contract lapses or a site changes hands. They are the most expensive way to buy energy in Britain and they persist because nobody is watching. See deemed rates and out-of-contract rates.

Independence you can build on

Until recently, the value in a business’s flexibility, shifting load or running a battery, belonged to its supplier by default. A market rule called P415, live since November 2024, changed that. An independent party can now take that flexibility to the wholesale market without the supplier’s involvement. The mechanics matter less than what they signal. The party managing your position no longer has to be the party selling you energy. Vester is paid by you, not by a supplier, so nothing in how we are paid pulls the advice towards a switch or a longer contract. Independence stops being a claim about character and becomes a fact about how the money moves.

The matching work is real

Getting the tariff right is not shopping harder; it is analysis. Half-hourly settlement means every large site’s consumption is priced against its actual profile. Matching that profile to the right structure requires your meter data, wholesale context, and independence from the supplier’s incentive. This is the work Vester charges for, openly.

Our disclosure, in full: Vester takes no commission, ever. We earn nothing from any supplier and nothing on the volume of energy you buy. Our revenue is the subscription you pay us directly, plus, on larger half-hourly sites, a disclosed tariff-matching fee. Market access costs 1p per kWh, and we pass it through at cost, keeping none of it. Where a partner introduces you, that partner earns a share of that access cost, disclosed to you to the same standard as our own fees.

Test your own position

The way out of an opaque market is measurement. How to benchmark explains the method. If you would rather we ran it, request a benchmark of what you should be paying, or book a fixed-fee review.