In simple terms this means that from April 14 suppliers will no longer be able to aggregate meters together into one supply point, giving them one transportation and metering cost. By July 2015 all current aggregated meters need to be de-aggregated and will have their own transportation and metering cost resulting in increased costs. The timescales of the change are:

1st April 2014 – a Supply Meter Point will not be permitted to be added to an existing multi-metered Supply Point, nor combined with another single Supply Meter Point, to create a new multi-meter Supply point. The acquisition (and loss) of aggregated sites is still permissible after the 1st April.

4 July 2015 – all existing aggregated sites must be de-aggregated 3 months prior to the Nexus go-live date (expected Q4 2015) and reconfirmed as single meter supply points.

Project Nexus is the Gas Industry Programme that will support and enable Xoserve to replace its ageing systems. It will provide an opportunity to fix the failings of the current processes and systems and build a platform to maximise the benefits of data that will be available with SMART.

We are currently assessing the business and customer impact of this change and looking at implementation plans. As soon as we have more detail we will send out further communications.

The Reasons for the change

1. Aggregating Meter Points into Supply Points does not result in a cost reflective capacity rates for the meters at the aggregated Supply Points.

2. The aggregation rules for suppliers are cumbersome to administer and are not easy to apply.

3. The removal of multi meter supply points will improve the granularity of consumptions when booked as part of a Directly Metered Supply Point component.