Do you know your AQ from your DUoS? The energy industry is very complex, meaning it’s very easy to get lost when discussing your usage or your contract.
We’ve put together a handy jargon buster to help towards making a tricky subject slightly easier.
We’ve selected some of the most common terms to highlight below.
| AQ | Annual Quantity | How much gas and electricity you use in a year. |
| CCL | Climate Change Levy | A small ‘non-commodity’ element of the price of your energy. |
| Capacity Charges | – | A significant proportion of your bill. |
| CED | Contract End Date | Day your contract ends. |
| CfD | Contracts for Difference | CfDs incentivise investment in renewable energy by providing developers of projects with high upfront costs and long lifetimes with direct protection from volatile wholesale prices. |
| DNO | Distribution Network Operator | The company responsible for actually getting your electricity to you in your area. |
| DUoS* | Distribution Use of System | A ‘non-commodity’ element of your price, which pays for the maintenance of your local energy infrastructure. |
| EAC | Estimated Annual Consumption | An estimate of how much gas and electricity you use in a year. |
| FIT | Small-Scale Feed in tariff (FiT) | The FIT scheme is a government programme designed to promote the uptake of small-scale renewable and low-carbon electricity generation technologies. |
| kWh | KiloWatt Hour | A measurement of energy usage – the power in kilowatts multiplied by the time in hours. |
| kVA | Kilovolt ampere | The measure of how much power is coming into your building via your electricity meter. Find out more on KVA in our dedicated blog article. |
| LOA | Letter of Authority | This allows someone to deal with your account on your behalf. At GAS, we’d use this to go to market and tender out your contract. |
| Load Shedding | – | Reducing usage at strategic times of the day in order to manage not only the cost of use but also unlocking the savings potential in certain types of energy contract. |
| MPAN | Meter Point Admin Number | Unique reference for your electricity meter. |
| MPRN | Meter Point Reference Number | Unique reference for your gas meter. |
| NHH | Non Half-Hourly | Electricity meters that don’t read data at half-hourly granularity – usually smaller supplies. |
| Pass-Through | – | A Pass Through contract allows you to fix your commodity cost into your unit price but your non-commodity elements billed separately to you at cost, making it slightly cheaper. The potential benefits of this are that, although you carry more of the risk as a consumer of potential price rises on the non-commodity costs, you also receive the benefit of any reductions throughout your contract. This gives you the opportunity to control your energy by lowering your consumption during grid peak periods (4-7pm) and in turn, reduce your costs. |
| RO | Renewable Obligation | An obligation imposed on suppliers by the government to source a proportion of the electricity they supply from renewable energy sources. |
| Standing Charge | – | The fee you pay your supplier to give you access to their energy. |
| TNUoS* | Transmission Network Use of System | A ‘non-commodity’ charge which is paid to the Transmission Network Operators for maintenance of the national transmission infrastructure. Your TNUoS charge is worked out using ‘Triads’ (see below). |
| Triads | – | Data from half-hourly meters is used to judge usage of the grid over periods of highest demand (known as ‘Triads’). Your usage during these times against the highest users will determine your TNUoS charge (see above). A multiplier based on your geographical location will also be applied to give you your final TNUoS charge. |
*If you are on a fixed price contract, these non-commodities will be built into your unit price. If you are on a pass-through contract, they are variable and will be itemised on your bill.
Sign up to our NewsletterStay up to date with the latest industry news and offers.