Energy bills for UK businesses have risen and fallen sharply in recent years — not because of anything happening in the UK, but because of events thousands of miles away.

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The Prime Minister recently said what most people have been thinking: we're tired of watching energy costs swing up and down because of geopolitical events beyond our control. And that's true.

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But here's the thing — waiting for governments to fix this is not a strategy for your business.

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We've been here before. Twice in four years.

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In early 2022, conflict in Ukraine sent wholesale gas prices to nine times the cost of renewables. UK electricity bills rose 28% that year. Businesses that hadn't locked in fixed long-term contracts were left scrambling. We told ourselves it was a once-in-a-generation event.

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Then conflict in the Middle East closed the Strait of Hormuz — the gateway through which around 20% of global oil supplies pass — and Europe found itself bracing for its second major energy price shock in four years.

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Even before this latest shock, UK electricity prices remained roughly 70% above their pre-2021 levels. The crisis never truly ended. It just quietened down for a while. And here's the uncomfortable truth: there will be a next time. We just don't know which flashpoint will trigger it.

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The structural problem with UK electricity prices

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UK business electricity costs are structurally expensive — running around 50% higher than comparable businesses in France or Germany, before any crisis hits.

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The reason? Gas still generates a significant share of the UK's electricity, and under the market structure, the most expensive generator sets the price for everyone. That means even when cheaper renewables are generating power, businesses still pay a price largely set by gas.

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When geopolitical events push gas prices up, everybody pays — regardless of whether they're actually buying gas. Governments are working to fix this structural problem. Progress is being made. But it's slow, and it doesn't help a business manage its costs today.

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So what can businesses actually do?

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A lot, as it turns out.

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Solar PV is a meaningful first step. A well-sized rooftop or ground-mount solar system typically offsets 20–40% of a site's electricity consumption during daylight hours. Every unit generated on-site is a unit not purchased from the grid — and when grid prices spike, that saving grows significantly.

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But solar alone has a limitation: the sun doesn't shine when you need it most.

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Peak grid prices in the UK typically occur in the late afternoon and evening — roughly 4pm to 8pm — when businesses are still running but solar output has dropped off. These are the periods when the grid is under most stress, prices are highest, and sites without storage are fully exposed.

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This is where batteries change the equation.

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A battery paired with solar charges during the day (absorbing cheap on-site generation) or overnight when grid prices are low, and discharges during those high-cost evening windows. Instead of buying expensive peak electricity from the grid, the business draws from its own stored reserves.

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The result: a site that generates its own energy, stores it intelligently, and dispatches it when grid prices are at their worst. Not fully off-grid — but far less exposed to the price swings that keep making headlines.

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‍Locking in certainty: the private wire PPA

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Here's the chart that should be on every energy manager's wall.

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The red line shows what UK businesses have been paying for grid electricity over the past six years. The green line shows what a business would have paid under a fixed private wire solar and battery Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) — roughly 14p/kWh for on-site generated power.

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Look at 2022 and 2023. Businesses locked into private wire PPAs were paying 14p while grid prices hit nearly 30p. For a mid-sized manufacturer or logistics site with a £500k annual electricity bill, that kind of differential is transformative.

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The broader point is this: when you fix a portion of your energy costs through a private wire PPA, you're buying certainty. Geopolitical events can't move that green line. International commodity markets can't move it. A portion of your energy cost is simply fixed — for 15, 20, or 25 years.

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You don't remove grid exposure entirely. But you reduce it — materially and immediately.

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Going further: smart tariffs and demand flexibility

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Solar and batteries are the foundation. But businesses that pair them with the right electricity tariff unlock a further layer of value that most people overlook.

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Dynamic Time of Use (ToU) tariffs — such as Octopus Energy’s Shapeshifter products - Agile and Trio — provide a genuine price signal that rewards businesses for using energy when it’s cheap and avoiding it when it’s expensive. For a site with solar and battery storage already in place, the combination is powerful: the battery charges when prices are low (overnight, or during periods of high renewable generation), and discharges when prices are high — typically those late afternoon and evening windows we’ve already talked about.

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Done well, this is more than just cost avoidance. It’s active energy management. And the businesses that get it right are finding it adds meaningful value on top of their solar and storage savings alone.

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If you want to go deeper on how tariff selection interacts with battery sizing and project economics, we covered this in detail in our recent webinar with Midsummer and Octopus Energy for Business — The C&I Battery Playbook for Tariff Optimisation.

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Stop being surprised

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The energy market has a pattern now. Crisis. Spike. Short relief. Next crisis. Spike again.

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We had the Ukraine conflict and the energy market reacted violently. We had the Middle East conflict and the same thing happened. But the reality is that these shocks are becoming the baseline — not the exception. The global environment is more volatile than at any point in the last 30 years, and the UK's exposure to international gas markets means that instability reaches directly onto businesses' balance sheets.

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Government responses — price caps, subsidies, emergency support — are reactive. They help at the margins. But they don't fix the underlying exposure.

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The businesses that will come out ahead are the ones that stop waiting for someone else to solve it, and start taking control of the portion of their energy costs they can actually fix.

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Solar. Batteries. Smart tariffs. Private wire PPAs.

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The tools exist. The economics work. And every month you wait, the next shock is one month closer.

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Orkestra helps solar and battery developers, ESCOs, and energy consultants model, propose, and manage C&I energy projects. If you're building proposals for clients looking to reduce their grid exposure, we'd love to show you how Orkestra Plan works.