Authorised Supply Capacity (ASC) is the amount of agreed electricity from the grid that is reserved for your use at any time. It is measured in kVA and appears on your bill as a Capacity Charge. Put simply, you rent this capacity and pay for every kVA that you are allocated on a daily or monthly basis.
How is the level set in the first place?
When a new connection is put in by the network operator, they will ask you how much power you will need making sure the cable going to your property is big enough to carry this. Your capacity charge will be set at this time to the kVA that the cable can carry. This might be more than you need and once you have a year's worth of data from the meter we recommend checking it and reducing it according to your usage, leaving a buffer for unforeseen circumstances.
If you have a Maximum Demand meter you will have already been changed over or should soon be changed over to Half Hourly metering and your ASC should have been set to a level relevant to your supply. Half Hourly Data makes it easier to check the demand you’ve hit for every half hour in the day over a year. From this we can assess the overall peak and either confirm that you’ve got an appropriate level set or whether you could save money in the long run by making an amendment.
Extra charges
In April new charges came in that will also be directly related to the level of ASC that you hold. Ofgem are now introducing a new charge called the Targeted Charge Review (TCR). This has not been fully implemented yet but will be in force by April 2023. ASCs will be banded and charged accordingly, with those under 200 kVA being the cheapest and those over 3,000 kVA the most expensive. In the higher bracket energy bills could increase by as much as £6-£10K and year. This is not a market crisis price. It is a planned one, and as such it will stay with us even if and when the energy market settles down.
If you have never checked your ASC it is worth us having a look to see if you need to adjust it. If you are under your allowance then you may need to lower it to save some money, equally if you are over your allowance, you will be paying excess fees and could save money by increasing it.
If we recommend a change and you would like to proceed, we can arrange this with your DNO to apply for the change. If they accept the change, this will apply from the following month’s bill so you can start saving immediately. For any help with this, give the NFU Energy contracts team a call on 024 7669 8885.