Electricity Accruals

2026-03-14

I expect that many of you, like me, will be involved with producing the electricity accrual each month for Finance. The accrual is the cost of electricity that's been used, but not yet billed. For Finance, the more accurate the accrual the better.

Half-hourly Meters

For half-hourly metered supplies this is easy because the HH data is available the day after it is recorded. So within the first couple of day of the month we can run the virtual bills on the HH data and get a really accurate figure for the cost of the previous month.

Heritage Meters

For heritage meters, Chellow projects forward the usage based on the most recent actual reads, and then the virtual bill uses that projected consumption to calculated the total bill for the month.

AMR Meters

For AMR meters the supplier bills on reads retrieved from the meter. As soon as the reads come in, they're sent to the supplier and also made available to the customer. So that means Chellow can download the latest AMR reads and use those for the accrual straight away, rather than having to wait until they appear in the bills later on in the month.

Other Parts of the Accrual

So far we've just concentrated on calculating the cost of energy used for the month just gone. Other things affect the accrual though:

• Historical bills that we know are inaccurate, but haven't yet been re-billed.
• Historical missing or estimated data that then becomes available.
• Elements such as CfD that are reconciled at a future date.

These are handled in Chellow using the same method of running a virtual bill which contains the most up-to-date view of what we'll eventually be billed. For example, Chellow will use the latest NBP kWh figure, which we know before the reconciliation comes in from the supplier. How far you go back depends on the particular situation, but at least a couple of years back seems sensible.

See you next time! ✨