Most business energy advice quietly assumes you can turn things off. A shop can dim the lights. An office can shut at six. You cannot ask 200 cows to hold on until the evening peak has passed, or leave a shed of birds without ventilation because the unit rate looks unfriendly this week.
Farm demand is set by livestock, weather and harvest, not by trading hours, so the one lever most farms still have is the price they pay per kWh. Here is where the energy goes, and the contract traps that catch rural supplies more often than any other sector.
Key takeaways
- Farm load is welfare-driven and seasonal, so you cannot shed it. Price is the lever.
- Typical UK farm bills run from roughly £5,900 to £89,500 a year, and heated glasshouses far higher again.
- A spiky harvest or housing profile gets priced as risk unless you hand the supplier real consumption data.
- Standing charges land on every meter point, so a holding with four supplies starts about £1,460 down before a single kWh.
- Businesses that switch with us save 40% on average, typically 30 to 50%, and more if you are on out-of-contract or deemed rates.
Why a farm bill looks the way it does
There is no single farm energy profile. A dairy, a broiler house, a potato store and a heated glasshouse share almost nothing except that none of them can move demand to suit the market.
Dairy: two peaks a day, every day of the year
Milk cooling, water heating and vacuum pumping account for over 80% of a dairy farm's electricity, and all three fire twice a day, 365 days a year. Every litre drops from about 37C to 4C in the bulk tank, the plant needs 80C wash water after each milking, and the vacuum pump runs flat out whether a cluster is on a cow or not.
AHDB and NFU Energy benchmark an average GB dairy at around 405 kWh per cow per year, with low users near 264 kWh and high users near 687 kWh. On a 200-cow herd the average is about 81,000 kWh, roughly £20,250 at 25p per kWh. The same herd at the high-user figure uses about 137,400 kWh, or £34,350. Same cows, same milk, about £14,000 of difference before anyone looks at your unit rate.
Poultry and pigs: heat and fans you are not allowed to switch off
DESNZ farm survey data puts specialist pig and poultry holdings at the top of the electricity intensity table, and the reason is welfare. Brooders hold 32C to 34C for the first week of every crop, and tunnel fans run in summer or you lose birds. Teagasc benchmarks a single 27,000-bird broiler house at around 35,000 kWh of electricity a year, about £8,750 at 25p, plus 240 to 270 MWh of heat. On a mains gas supply at 7p per kWh, that heat alone would be roughly £16,800 to £18,900.
Pigs follow the same logic. Ventilation, lighting, feed lines and washing on a standard 2,000-pig indoor unit come to roughly 22 to 24 kWh per pig place per year, so about 44,000 to 48,000 kWh, or £11,000 to £12,000 of electricity. That is before farrowing and weaner heat, because newly weaned pigs need 29C to 30C and heat pads do not negotiate.
Grain drying: a year of electricity compressed into six weeks
AHDB's drying calculator assumes 1.20 litres of gas oil per tonne per percentage point of moisture removed on continuous flow driers, with operating costs around £1.20 to £1.50 per tonne per point. Take 1,000 tonnes down three points and that one job is roughly £3,600 to £4,500.
Much of that is oil, which no supplier switch will move. What a switch does move is everything around it: on-floor fans, store ventilation, intake pits, conveyors and mill and mix, all running day and night for weeks and then stopping dead. A refrigerated potato, onion or fruit store then holds temperature from October to June.
Glasshouses and yards: the two extremes
Nothing on a UK farm burns energy like heated glass. A hectare of commercial glasshouse typically consumes 600,000 to 1,200,000 kWh a year, roughly 60 to 120 kWh per square metre. On gas at 7p per kWh that is £42,000 to £84,000 for one hectare before supplementary lighting. Energy is now 30% to 40% of operating cost for heated growers, up from 15% to 20% before 2021, and protected horticulture was excluded from the energy relief scheme that covered other energy-intensive industries.
At the other end, equestrian yards sit between farm and leisure business, which is exactly why so many end up on a poor rate. Floodlit arenas, horse walkers and heated troughs all peak in winter, and older metal halide arena lighting can draw three to four times the power of an LED replacement.
Typical farm energy use and bills
These are typical, estimated ranges built from published UK benchmarks (AHDB, Teagasc, DESNZ and CIBSE TM46), priced at 25p per kWh for electricity, 7p per kWh for gas and around £365 a year in standing charges. They are not quotes, and one recent bill beats any of them.
| Enterprise | Electricity a year | Gas a year | Typical annual bill |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dairy farm | 30,000 to 180,000 kWh | 2,000 to 20,000 kWh | £8,000 to £46,800 |
| Poultry or egg unit | 25,000 to 180,000 kWh | 40,000 to 600,000 kWh | £9,400 to £87,400 |
| Pig unit | 25,000 to 200,000 kWh | 5,000 to 150,000 kWh | £7,000 to £60,900 |
| Glasshouse or protected horticulture | 25,000 to 250,000 kWh | 250,000 to 2,000,000 kWh | £24,100 to £202,900 |
| Grain drying or crop store | 20,000 to 250,000 kWh | 5,000 to 180,000 kWh | £5,700 to £75,500 |
| Equestrian yard or livery | 12,000 to 120,000 kWh | 2,000 to 50,000 kWh | £3,500 to £33,900 |
The scale matters more than the exact number. On a £20,000 farm bill, a 30 to 50% improvement is worth £6,000 to £10,000 a year. On a £50,000 poultry bill it is £15,000 to £25,000. That is recurring, it needs no capital, and nothing changes in the parlour or the shed.
The contract traps that catch farms
Out-of-contract and deemed rates after harvest
The timing is cruel. Contracts often end in late summer or early autumn, precisely when nobody is reading post. When a fixed term lapses the supplier keeps supplying you on an out-of-contract or deemed rate, and there is no price cap on business energy to hold it down. It is the most expensive way to buy electricity, and it is where the largest improvements come from. Businesses that switch with us save 40% on average, typically 30 to 50%, and more if you are on out-of-contract or deemed rates.
Rollover and the renewal window
The mirror image is the rollover, where you are moved onto another fixed term you never chose. You do not have to wait for the end date. Rates can be agreed up to 12 months ahead and held, so you are not forced to take whatever the market is doing in the week your contract lapses.
Standing charges on every meter point
Farms are rarely one meter. The parlour, the grain store, the poultry houses and the yard often each have their own MPAN, and every one carries a standing charge of roughly £365 a year. Four supplies is about £1,460 before a single kWh moves. Low-use supplies deserve a hard look, because on a store meter that only wakes at harvest the standing charge can be most of the bill.
Half-hourly supplies and capacity charges
Larger farms, big glasshouses and units with heavy motor load often sit on a half-hourly supply, which brings capacity (KVA) charges and distribution bands into the bill. Both are negotiable at renewal, and agreed capacity is very often set far higher than the farm has ever drawn, so you pay for headroom you never use. Half-hourly data also helps on price, because it proves your peak is seasonal rather than random.
Seven changes that cut the kWh
Switching fixes the price. These fix the volume, and the two stack. Rough impacts come from published sector guidance rather than any one site.
- Fit a plate cooler ahead of the bulk tank. Dropping incoming milk temperature before refrigeration starts can cut milk cooling electricity by 40% to 50%.
- Recover compressor waste heat into wash water. Water heating is 25% to 35% of a dairy bill, so pre-heating it with heat you have already paid for is the obvious second win after cooling.
- Put variable speed drives on vacuum pumps and ventilation fans. Fan power falls with the cube of speed, so a modest speed reduction typically takes 30% to 50% off fan energy.
- Move lighting to LED. Dimmable LED cuts poultry house lighting energy by around 70%, and on arenas it replaces metal halide drawing three to four times the power.
- Install thermal screens in glasshouses and close them at dusk. That typically cuts glasshouse heat demand by 20% to 30%, one of the fastest paybacks in protected horticulture.
- Heat the animal, not the building. Zoned or radiant brooding beats whole-house heating at chick placement, and thermostatic heat pads give the same piglet comfort as heat lamps for a fraction of the power.
- Maintain and time what you already have. A dirty bulk tank condenser can add 20% to cooling energy. Use ambient air and humidity control before you add heat in the drier, and shift pressure washing, feed milling and battery charging off-peak if you are on a day/night or half-hourly meter.
When to switch, and how it works
The best time to look is 3 to 12 months before your contract ends, and the worst is the week after it lapsed. If you are already out of contract there is no notice period and no exit fee, so you can move straight away.
Before you get quotes, take a meter reading at the start and end of harvest, or at housing and turnout. A documented seasonal peak is priced far better than an unexplained spike, because suppliers price uncertainty as risk and you pay for it in the unit rate.
From there it is short. You send a recent bill, we read your meter numbers, consumption and contract end date off it, and we compare more than 20 UK suppliers against your actual profile rather than a generic agricultural assumption. You see real prices before committing, and the service is free to you because the supplier pays a commission disclosed on your quote.
Nothing physical changes on the farm. Your meters, cables, pipes and network operator stay as they are, and there is no interruption to supply. The only things that change are who bills you and at what rate. You can get a free estimate for your farm, or start with the farming and agriculture energy guide.
The enterprise pages break out the loads and typical bills in more detail: dairy farms, poultry and egg units, pig units, protected horticulture, grain drying and crop stores and equestrian yards.
Farm energy questions we get asked most
Can I switch if the farmhouse and the yard share one supply?
It depends on the meters, not the buildings. If the house and the farm buildings sit behind a single domestic meter, that is a domestic tariff and cannot take a business contract. If the yard, parlour, grain store or poultry houses have their own MPAN, that is a business supply and can be switched. Send a bill and we can tell you which you are in.
My use spikes for six weeks at harvest. Will that be priced badly?
It will if you let the supplier guess. Quotes are built on estimated annual consumption and load shape, and a spiky agricultural profile with nothing attached attracts a cautious, expensive price. Twelve months of actual consumption, or half-hourly data where you have it, shows the peak is predictable, which normally pulls the unit rate down.
Does the Climate Change Levy apply to my farm?
CCL is charged on business gas and electricity and rises to 0.801p per kWh on both fuels from April 2026, which is £801 on every 100,000 kWh. Supplies used mainly for domestic or charitable purposes, and very low-usage supplies, can qualify for the reduced 5% VAT rate and CCL exemption, and horticulture may qualify for a Climate Change Agreement discount. It is worth checking, because an incorrect VAT declaration costs farms real money every year.
You cannot switch off a milk tank, a ventilation fan or a grain drier. You can switch what you pay for the electricity and gas that run them.
All figures here are estimates from published UK benchmarks and transparent calculations at 25p per kWh for electricity, 7p per kWh for gas and around £365 a year in standing charges, not quotes. See how we estimate.