Matching small businesses with local renewables to skip £50/MWh in levies
I built a platform that pairs SMEs with local generators under 5 MW and keeps every pair inside the Supplier Exempt Class A limits. The matched power skips about £50/MWh in non-commodity costs, and the generator still gets its agreed price.
- Role
- Built the matching platform
- Stack
- Python, PyTorch, Optimisation, Graph algorithms
£50/MWh
Levies avoided per matched MWh
60+
Generator and business pairings
35%
Match success rate across candidate pairs
How it works
- 1
Site data
demand, output, location
- 2
Load matching
- 3
Pair scoring
- 4
Compliance checks
5 MW and 2.5 MW limits
- 5
Contracts and reports
Results
One pairing, one year
A solar farm generating about 7 GWh a year, matched with a business complex of 20 to 25 SMEs. Up to 85% of the output is used locally, and every exempt MWh skips about £50 in policy levies.
6 GWh
Used locally a year
£50/MWh
Levies avoided
£300,000
Potential saving a year
Worked example from the project.
More than 60 pairings and over £3M of value for SMEs and utilities, with a 35% match success rate across candidate pairs.
Key decisions
- 01
Match on load shape and location
A good pair needs the business to use power when the generator makes it. Load profiling lines up generation with consumption before the scoring picks a pair.
- 02
Forecast demand to size each deal
Consumption forecasts estimate how much of a generator's output each business will actually use, which sets how much of the exemption a pairing is worth.
- 03
Keep compliance in the loop
Each pair has to stay under 5 MW in total and 2.5 MW to homes. Compliance checks run on every match and update when the rules change, and contracts are generated with legal validation.