The UK energy sector stands on the edge of a transformation so profound it rivals deregulation itself. Market-wide Half-Hourly Settlement (MHHS) will rewrite the operational DNA of retail energy, not through marginal change, but through radical transparency, automation, and granularity.

The instinctive reaction for many suppliers is to treat MHHS as a compliance challenge. But framing it as a cost centre alone risks missing the bigger picture. This is not just a regulatory burden, it’s a commercial turning point.

Once MHHS comes into play, the profitability profile of every currently profile-settled meter will shift dramatically. If retailers don’t proactively prepare, they risk opening a Pandora’s box of margin erosion and operational misalignment.

In this article, we explore the key shifts MHHS brings, what capabilities energy retailers need to develop, and how some of the sector’s most experienced voices are thinking about this moment of change.

MHHS isn’t just compliance, it’s a new market operating system

MHHS mandates that all energy usage (domestic and non-domestic) be settled at half-hourly granularity. This move introduces data precision and frequency at a scale the industry hasn’t seen before.

Retailers will be working with exponentially more data, meaning that data needs to flow in near-real time to power accurate billing, agile pricing, and responsive risk management. Those who try to meet this with spreadsheets and fragmented systems will struggle. Those who embrace a unified data layer will unlock margin, efficiency, and innovation.

Collaboration over competition: The industry-wide imperative

For MHHS to fulfil its potential, retailers must resist the urge to view data as a moat. The coming years should be about competing on what you do with data, not who has it.

And while system architecture and analytics frameworks are vital, MHHS is ultimately about improving outcomes for consumers, for the grid, and for the environment. Data should power not just systems, but relationships. The customer isn’t an afterthought.

There’s also a profound operational shift underway: processes that are manual today (like balancing complex B2B portfolios) will become entirely data-driven. These roles aren’t going away, but they will be transformed. What was once a hands-on, intuition-led task will become an exercise in real-time analysis and algorithmic precision.

Data standardisation and interoperability will be critical to enabling that shift. As Anne-Laure Mersier of Baringa put it, energy retailers must collaborate across organisational and industry silos, enabling innovation in not just tariffs, but services, partnerships, and system-level optimisation.

From static tariffs to dynamic pricing

With usage patterns fragmenting and settlement becoming more precise, pricing itself becomes a complex, real-time function.

Retailers must prepare for a future where prices are not set-and-forget, but continuously optimised and tailored to customer flexibility, usage patterns, and broader market dynamics. This means integrated systems that allow pricing teams to model, test, and deploy updates across residential and commercial books with speed and scale.

Crucially, this pricing needs to tie back to customer value. Today’s “best” customers, those who are passive and predictable and on standard tariffs, may soon be your least profitable. Tomorrow’s high-value customers are likely to be engaged, flexible, and producing as much as they consume.

Forecasting: A new engine for margin

Forecasting has long been treated as a technical function, often isolated from pricing, sales, and portfolio strategy. But in the MHHS era, that approach won’t hold. With half-hourly data across all customer segments, forecasting becomes a real-time capability that’s central to managing risk, setting accurate prices, and protecting margin.

Today, many retailers operate with fragmented systems where forecasting, quoting, and hedging run on separate tools and disconnected logic. This misalignment leads to commercial decisions that optimise for volume while silently leaking margin. MHHS will only expose these vulnerabilities further.

The opportunity is to use rich, granular data not just to forecast more precisely, but to connect forecasting with the full commercial value chain. By aligning it with margin-focused strategy and breaking down internal silos, retailers can shift from reactive planning to proactive optimisation.

In this new landscape, forecasting isn't just a support function but a core driver of profitability.

Go granular and stay agile

The volatility of half-hourly data doesn't just affect billing, it hits the core of supply risk and profitability. Forecasting half-hourly demand (and increasingly, customer-side generation) is no longer just a back-office function. It becomes the strategic engine of commercial decision-making.

Forecasting frameworks will need to evolve from daily or portfolio-level predictions to highly granular, scenario-aware models. This requires automation, flexibility, and scalability, especially as inputs shift dynamically with weather, policy, or consumer tech adoption. The ability to rapidly recalibrate forecasts and link them to pricing and trading desks will determine who hedges smartly and who bleeds margin.

Conclusion: Build for profitability, not just compliance

Many retailers are fixated on reaching the MHHS compliance deadline. But meeting regulatory obligations is just the baseline and not the benchmark for success. The real opportunity lies in using MHHS to unlock smarter, more profitable operations.

As half-hourly data reshapes consumption visibility, the ability to protect and grow margin will increasingly depend on how well retailers can forecast risk, price dynamically, and align commercial strategy around real-time insight. Margin leakage today often hides in complexity: in unbalanced portfolios, mispriced segments, and disconnected systems. MHHS exposes those cracks and offers the data needed to fix them.

The retailers who act now to integrate, automate, and optimise around profitability, not just process accuracy, will be best placed to thrive in this new landscape. In the MHHS era, profitability isn’t about selling more energy. It’s about understanding where your margin lives and making better decisions, faster, to protect it.

Gorilla supports energy retailers across the UK with intelligent, flexible, and scalable solutions built for the MHHS era from billing determinants and forecasting, to pricing and portfolio insight.