Switch your business electricity supplier

Registration takes two to five working days, depending on your supplier (Citizens Advice, Crown Gas & Power), correct as of August 2026. Your electricity never goes off while it happens. You can start as soon as your end-of-contract notice arrives, which for micro businesses lands around 60 days before the end date (Ofgem, 2021).

When you can switch (and when you can't)

Find your contract end date. It sits on your contract, and for a micro business on a fixed term it should be printed on your bill.

Inside a fixed term with a year still to run, stay put. There is nothing to gain and a termination fee to lose. We will tell you when the window opens.

If nobody ever agreed a contract for the site, you are on a deemed rate. You can leave whenever you like. Your supplier cannot object, ask for notice, or charge a termination fee (Ofgem, page last updated June 2021). Ofgem puts deemed prices at 80% above negotiated rates on average, and around 10% of micro businesses sit on them.

Now the bit most pages get wrong. Since 1 October 2022, suppliers cannot require a micro business to serve a termination notice before switching. Evergreen contracts are the one exception (Ofgem, Microbusiness Strategic Review decision, 28 March 2022). Where a notice period does legitimately apply, it is capped at 30 days (Ofgem, in force since 30 April 2015). You can tell your supplier you intend to leave at any time before the notice period, so there is no such thing as too early.

Those protections apply if you count as a micro business. You pass Ofgem's test on any one count. Fewer than 10 employees with turnover or a balance sheet under £2m. Or no more than 100,000 kWh of electricity a year. The test runs per fuel, so you can qualify on electricity and not on gas (Ofgem, retrieved August 2026).

The switch, step by step

One form and about ten minutes of your time.

1. Get a quote. Postcode, a recent bill or your MPAN, and your contract end date. Two minutes.
2. Sign a letter of authority. It lets us ask your current supplier for your usage, your end date and your notice period. It does not let us agree a contract on your behalf. See what you're authorising.
3. Read the offer before you say yes. Once you agree, that is binding. There is no cooling-off period on a business energy contract, including one agreed over the phone (Ofgem, October 2022 guidance). Ofgem consulted on a 14-day cooling-off period for micro businesses and decided in March 2022 not to proceed.
4. We register the supply against your MPAN. That 13-digit number identifies your meter point, so nothing hangs on your address being typed the same way twice. Where to find your MPAN shows you the box on your bill.
5. Registration runs. TotalEnergies and Crown Gas & Power both describe a two-working-day switch window for business customers under Ofgem's Faster Switching rules, live since 18 July 2022. Citizens Advice says five working days. Octopus quotes three days from sign-up. Budget two to five.
6. Send a meter reading. Anywhere from five days before to five days after the switch date works (Octopus, British Gas Business, retrieved August 2026).
7. Your new rate starts on the contract start date. Usually that is the day after your old contract ends.

Two things every other page runs together. The switch takes days. The wait is your contract end date, which can be months. Agree the new contract now and have it start then.

What it costs

Nothing upfront. The supplier pays us through an uplift on your unit rate, so it comes out of what you pay. Since 1 October 2022 that cost has to appear in your contract's Principal Terms, as a total in pounds and pence (Ofgem, 28 March 2022). Ours is on your quote while you are still deciding. The mechanics are in brokers and commissions.

What can go wrong

Your old supplier can block the switch, and there are only two valid grounds: you are still inside a fixed term, or you owe them money (Ofgem, objections decision, 25 July 2016). Your supplier has two working days to object, cut from up to seven when Faster Switching went live on 18 July 2022 (Crown Gas & Power). Leave an objection unresolved and the switch may be cancelled (British Gas Business). Clear it and the clock restarts, roughly three days at Octopus.

The other failure is an erroneous transfer, which is a supplier mistake, usually your address getting confused with someone else's. Domestic customers get automatic compensation when a switch goes wrong. Businesses do not, and Ofgem says so plainly. That is why we chase it, and tell you where it stands.

Suppliers must take all reasonable steps to acknowledge a micro business termination notice within five working days (Ofgem, in force since 30 April 2015). If yours goes quiet past that, we ring them, not you.

Since 19 December 2024, Ofgem's Small Business class has given Energy Ombudsman access to firms with fewer than 50 employees, or under 200,000 kWh of electricity a year (Ofgem, 5 April 2024). Brokers have been in scope for redress since 1 December 2022 (Ofgem, 28 March 2022).

We price your latest bill against the market, tell you what we are paid on it, and say so if your current deal already wins.

Where to next

If your end date is close, start with when to switch. For the longer walkthrough across both fuels, read our full guide to changing energy supplier. Business energy contracts explained covers what you can be on.