energy-waste-walk

---
name: energy-waste-walk
description: Produces one dated standing-cost file for a UK hospitality site - what your building is spending when nobody is in it, the contract and VAT positions that multiply every unit you burn, the refrigeration leak checks the law already requires of you, and a costed list of what to switch off, fix or renegotiate with an owner and a date against each. Use before you renew an energy contract, when a bill jumps and nobody knows why, or when you want to know what the building costs overnight.
---

# Find out what your building spends when nobody is in it

You give this your last four energy bills, your meter numbers, your opening hours, your employee count and half an hour to walk the site with a torch. You get back one dated file: your standing overnight load measured rather than guessed, your contract and VAT positions with the wording that governs each, the refrigeration leak checks the law already requires, and findings costed at your own unit rate with an owner and a date against each. It does not promise a saving. It measures what the building is doing and prices it at your own rate.

## What it does

1. **Fix the contract position before you touch a single light switch, because the unit rate multiplies every other finding in the file.** Four states, and they are not the same. A deemed contract, which Ofgem describes as what you are placed on "when you move into a new business premises and use electricity or gas before agreeing a contract with a supplier". An out of contract rate, which applies where "your contract says what will happen when your contract comes to an end" and "is different to a deemed contract". A rollover, where "If you do not change your contract before it expires, your supplier will automatically rollover your contract", limited because "Microbusinesses cannot have a rollover contract for more than 12 months". And a fixed term you agreed. Write which one you are on, the end date, the unit rate and the standing charge for each meter. Then read the sentence that costs owners most: "There is no cooling-off period after you agree the contract, even when this agreement is made over the phone rather than in writing." A yes on the phone is a contract that afternoon.

2. **Establish whether you are a microbusiness, because it decides what protections you have, and the test itself is your first measurement.** Ofgem's definition: "If your business has fewer than 10 employees or their full-time equivalent and has an annual turnover or balance sheet total of not more than £2 million it is classed as a microbusiness." A business failing that still qualifies if it uses "no more than 100,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity per year or 293,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) of gas per year". Add up the kWh on four quarterly bills or twelve monthly ones and you have both the answer and the number every later step is measured against. Do not take it from a supplier's annual summary without checking against the bills, because a summary rolls estimated reads into the total without saying so.

3. **Get the broker out of your bill, in writing, before you negotiate anything.** A third party intermediary is usually paid by being added to your unit rate, which means the cost is real and invisible. Ofgem states that "Information on TPI costs that will be included in the bill the supplier sends you must be provided to all businesses via the Principal Terms and upon request." So ask the supplier for the Principal Terms and ask the broker in writing what their commission is in pence per kWh and over what term. Ofgem adds that "If you are a Micro or Small Business your broker should be signed up to an alternative redress scheme, also known as a Qualifying Dispute Settlement Scheme (QDSS)", which gives you somewhere to go. Record who you asked, when, and what came back. An unanswered question stays on the list.

4. **Test the VAT and levy position next, because it is the only saving in this file that needs no equipment and no behaviour change.** HMRC's de minimis limits are specific. For electricity: "Supplies of not more than an average rate of 33 kilowatt hours per day, 1,000 kilowatt hours per month, of electricity to one customer at any one of the customer's premises are subject to VAT at the reduced rate." For piped gas: "Supplies of not more than an average rate of 5 therms or 145 kilowatt hours per day, 150 therms or 4,397 kilowatt hours per month". The reduced rate is 5%, and Climate Change Levy follows it: "Supplies of small amounts of energy (de minimis) are also excluded." A small cafe, a single-meter unit or a separately metered flat above the premises can sit under these limits without anybody noticing. Note too that a temporary zero rate has been announced and has not started: "The temporary zero rate applies from 1 October 2026 to 31 March 2027." As at 16 September 2026 that is not in force, and it applies only to qualifying use, so do not model it into a current bill.

5. **Measure the standing load before you look for it, by reading the meter twice when the building is empty.** Take a reading at lock-up and another at open, write both down with the exact times, subtract, and divide by the hours between. That figure in kilowatts is what your building draws with nobody in it, and it is the most useful number an independent venue can own. Do it on the quietest night of the week, with no deliveries or deep cleans. If the site has a smart or half-hourly meter, ask the supplier for the same period's data and compare. A supplier's data that disagrees with a meter you photographed is a billing question, not a measurement problem, and it goes in the file as an open item with the date you raised it.

6. **Walk the refrigeration first, and treat the leak check as a legal duty rather than a maintenance preference.** If you use stationary refrigeration, air-conditioning, heat pumps or fire protection equipment, you are responsible for getting it checked. The frequencies run by charge size in tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent: 5 to under 50 requires an annual check, 50 to under 500 every six months, and 500 or more every three months, with automatic detection required at the top band. "If you install a system to automatically detect leaks, you can double the period of time allowed between leak checks." And: "If you find a leak during a check, you must repair it as soon as possible and repeat the test within a month to check the repair worked." The consequence is stated plainly: "You are breaking the law if you don't have the right leak checks in place, or don't fix leaks. You could receive a civil penalty." A leaking system is a compliance problem and a cost problem at once, because a short charge makes the compressor run longer for the same cabinet temperature. Record the equipment, the charge, the last check date and the engineer.

7. **Then walk the rest in a fixed order, recording run hours against opening hours rather than impressions.** Kitchen extraction, hot water, cellar cooling, ice, display chillers, external and back of house lighting, screens and tills, and anything with a heating element. For each one write three numbers: the hours it actually runs in a week, the hours the venue is open, and its load in kilowatts read off the nameplate or metered at the socket. The gap between the first two, multiplied by the third, is the finding. Extraction left on all night, a cellar cooler fighting an open door, a hot water system heating through a closed Monday, an outside sign burning from four in the afternoon to nine the next morning. Do not record "seems to be on a lot". Record a start time and a finish time observed or read from a timer, and name the person who read it. A walk that produces adjectives cannot be repeated next quarter and compared.

8. **If you rent, look up your own building's energy rating before you spend a penny on the fabric, because the obligation may not be yours.** The minimum standard for let non-domestic property in England and Wales is EPC band E, and it stopped being a letting-event trigger some time ago: "From 1 April 2023, the requirement for non-domestic landlords to obtain at least an EPC E rating, unless they have registered a valid exemption, applies to all privately rented non-domestic properties (even where there has been no change in tenancy)." It reaches property let on a term certain of between six months and 99 years, and landlords may register exemptions on a public register: "Members of the public can search the Exemptions Register for details of exempt properties and penalties issued to non-compliant landlords." So a tenant can check the rating and any exemption claimed on their own premises, then put a dated written question to the landlord rather than quietly paying to heat a building the landlord is obliged to improve.

9. **Cost every finding at your own unit rate, put a name and a date on it, and fix the day you will walk it again.** Take the kilowatts from step 5 and step 7, multiply by the hours, multiply by the pence per kWh from your own bill in step 1, and you have a pounds figure that belongs to your building and nobody else's. Never use a published average for this. Rank by annual pounds, not by how easy the fix is, and give each finding an owner and a date. Then diary the re-walk, because a standing load measured once is a fact and one measured twice is a trend. Date the file and record when each source was read.

## Then it checks

1. The file names the contract state for every meter, with the contract end date, the unit rate and the standing charge read from a bill rather than from memory.
2. The microbusiness test is answered with an employee or turnover figure and an annual kWh figure, both with the source they came from, and is not answered as "we are small".
3. The standing load is stated in kilowatts and is derived from two meter readings with recorded dates and times, not from an estimate, a rule of thumb or a supplier's summary.
4. Every appliance on the walk carries observed or timer-read start and finish times, a load in kilowatts marked as nameplate or metered, and a named reader, and no entry consists of an adjective.
5. Every refrigeration and air-conditioning item is listed with its charge, its last leak check date and the engineer, or is explicitly marked as unknown and put in the gaps list.
6. Every costed finding uses the site's own pence per kWh from its own bill, no national average or published benchmark appears anywhere in the file, and nothing in the file states that the site is compliant or that a saving is guaranteed.

Any check fails: name it, redo that step once. Failed twice: say what is wrong and stop.

## Rules
- Public information only.
- Never invent a fact, a number or a quote.
- Anything sent in someone's name says whose name it is. A written question to a landlord, a broker or a supplier goes out over the name of the person who will have to answer the reply.
- Never state a saving percentage, a typical overnight load, an industry average kWh per cover, or a benchmark for a venue of any size. No published figure exists for a single independent UK venue, and an owner who sets a target from a borrowed number will conclude their own site is failing.
- Refuse to write an estimated kWh, an estimated run time or an estimated unit rate into a costed finding. A missing reading is a gap with a date against it, not a number with a shrug behind it.
- Never tell an owner they are a microbusiness, that they qualify for the reduced VAT rate, or that their landlord is in breach. Those are determinations for the supplier, HMRC and the local weights and measures authority, and an owner told "you are fine" by a document stops asking the people who could actually tell them.
- Never advise signing, switching or terminating an energy contract. Record the position, the end date and the questions, and leave the decision with the owner, who has no cooling-off period to fall back on.
- Never carry an energy or tax figure forward from an earlier file without re-reading the source. The VAT treatment of electricity in Great Britain changes on a published date inside the next six months.
- This output is a working document prepared for the owner to check with their energy supplier, their refrigeration engineer, their accountant and their landlord before it is relied on. It records measurements taken on a stated date and prices them at the site's own rate. It is not tax advice and it does not certify compliance with anything.

## Built from
- Ofgem, "Set up a business energy contract", https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/information-consumers/energy-advice-businesses/set-business-energy-contract, no publication date shown on the page, read 16 September 2026: the deemed contract, out of contract and rollover definitions, the 12 month rollover limit for microbusinesses, the absence of a cooling-off period, and the Energy Ombudsman route, all in step 1.
- Ofgem, "Third Party Intermediaries: what your microbusiness needs to know", https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/guidance/third-party-intermediaries-what-your-microbusiness-needs-know, published 14 October 2022, read 16 September 2026: the full microbusiness definition including the 100,000 kWh electricity and 293,000 kWh gas tests in step 2, and the Principal Terms disclosure duty and the Qualifying Dispute Settlement Scheme in step 3.
- HMRC, "VAT on fuel and power (VAT Notice 701/19)", https://www.gov.uk/guidance/vat-on-fuel-and-power-notice-70119, published 28 April 2016, last updated 8 September 2026, read 16 September 2026: the electricity de minimis at paragraph 5.2 and the piped gas de minimis at paragraph 4.2, the 5% reduced rate, the Climate Change Levy de minimis exclusion, and the temporary zero rate running from 1 October 2026 to 31 March 2027, all in step 4.
- GOV.UK and the Environment Agency, "Checking F gas equipment for leaks", https://www.gov.uk/guidance/checking-f-gas-equipment-for-leaks, published 21 August 2019, read 16 September 2026: the equipment types the duty attaches to, the leak check frequencies by tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, the doubling where automatic detection is fitted, the one month re-test after a repair, and the civil penalty wording, all in step 6.
- GOV.UK, "Non-domestic private rented property: minimum energy efficiency standard - landlord guidance", https://www.gov.uk/guidance/non-domestic-private-rented-property-minimum-energy-efficiency-standard-landlord-guidance, published 13 August 2019, last updated 5 May 2026, read 16 September 2026: the EPC band E minimum, the 1 April 2023 extension to all existing lettings, the six month to 99 year term certain scope, and the public searchability of the exemptions register, all in step 8.

This is a working document prepared for the owner to check with their supplier, their engineer, their accountant and their landlord before it is relied on. It is not tax advice and it does not certify compliance.

# energy-waste-walk

## You are given
One UK hospitality site's energy position and one completed walk, already judged by Claude. Specifically: the site name and address and its tenure, naming the landlord where the premises are rented; every meter with its MPAN or MPRN, fuel, supplier, contract state, contract end date, unit rate in pence per kWh and standing charge, each read from a named bill with that bill's date; the kWh consumed per bill period for the last four bills per meter, each marked as an actual or an estimated read; the employee count or full-time equivalent and the turnover or balance sheet total with their source; the two lock-up and open meter readings with their exact dates and times; the site's opening hours; a line by line walk record naming each item of equipment, its location, its observed or timer-read start and finish times and the person who read them; every refrigeration, air-conditioning, heat pump and fire protection unit with its refrigerant, charge in tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, last leak check date, engineer and whether automatic leak detection is fitted; the EPC rating and certificate date where held and whether an exemption is registered; every written question put to a supplier, broker or landlord with the date asked and the answer; and the quoted source wording Claude relied on, each with its source URL and the date it was read. Where a figure or judgement is missing it arrives as the words `not supplied`.

## Produce
Write into a `./energy-waste-walk-output/` folder:

1. `meters-and-contracts.csv` with these columns in this order: `meter_ref`, `mpan_or_mprn`, `fuel`, `supplier`, `contract_state`, `contract_end_date`, `unit_rate_pence_per_kwh`, `standing_charge_pence_per_day`, `bill_date_read_from`, `cooling_off_available`. `fuel` is exactly one of `electricity`, `gas`. `contract_state` is exactly one of `deemed`, `out of contract`, `rollover`, `fixed term`, `not supplied`. `cooling_off_available` is always `no` and carries the source in `source_url`. Add `source_url` and `source_read_date` as the final two columns.
2. `consumption.csv` with columns: `meter_ref`, `period_start`, `period_end`, `kwh`, `read_type`, `days_in_period`, `kwh_per_day`. `read_type` is exactly one of `actual`, `estimated`, `not supplied`. `kwh_per_day` is `kwh` divided by `days_in_period` to two decimal places.
3. `microbusiness-test.csv` with columns: `employees_fte`, `turnover_or_balance_sheet_gbp`, `annual_electricity_kwh`, `annual_gas_kwh`, `electricity_threshold_kwh`, `gas_threshold_kwh`, `employee_threshold`, `turnover_threshold_gbp`, `figures_source`, `source_url`, `source_read_date`. One row. The four threshold columns are copied exactly from the input and never altered. No verdict column is written.
4. `vat-and-levy.csv` with columns: `meter_ref`, `fuel`, `average_kwh_per_day`, `de_minimis_kwh_per_day`, `de_minimis_kwh_per_month`, `average_kwh_per_month`, `under_de_minimis_on_supplied_figures`, `vat_rate_on_current_bill_percent`, `temporary_zero_rate_starts`, `temporary_zero_rate_ends`, `source_url`, `source_read_date`. `under_de_minimis_on_supplied_figures` is `yes`, `no` or `not supplied` and is a statement about the arithmetic only, never a statement about entitlement. `vat_rate_on_current_bill_percent` is read from a bill and left empty where none was supplied.
5. `standing-load.csv` with columns: `meter_ref`, `lockup_date`, `lockup_time`, `lockup_reading`, `open_date`, `open_time`, `open_reading`, `hours_elapsed`, `kwh_used`, `standing_load_kw`, `read_by`, `half_hourly_data_supplied`, `discrepancy_with_half_hourly`. `standing_load_kw` is `kwh_used` divided by `hours_elapsed` to three decimal places. Rows with any missing reading or time are left with an empty `standing_load_kw` and listed in `gaps.md`.
6. `walk-findings.csv` with columns: `finding_ref`, `equipment`, `location`, `runs_from`, `runs_to`, `weekly_run_hours`, `weekly_open_hours`, `excess_hours`, `time_source`, `read_by`, `load_kw`, `load_source`, `annual_kwh`, `unit_rate_pence_per_kwh`, `annual_cost_gbp`, `owner`, `target_date`. `finding_ref` is E001 upward. `time_source` is exactly one of `observed`, `timer read`, `not supplied`. `load_source` is exactly one of `nameplate`, `metered`, `not supplied`. `excess_hours` is `weekly_run_hours` minus `weekly_open_hours`. `annual_cost_gbp` is computed only where `load_kw`, `annual_kwh` and `unit_rate_pence_per_kwh` are all present, and is left empty otherwise.
7. `refrigeration-register.csv` with columns: `unit_ref`, `equipment`, `location`, `refrigerant`, `charge_tonnes_co2e`, `required_check_frequency`, `automatic_detection_fitted`, `frequency_after_doubling`, `last_check_date`, `engineer`, `next_check_due`, `leak_found`, `retest_due`, `source_url`, `source_read_date`. `required_check_frequency` is exactly one of `every 12 months`, `every 6 months`, `every 3 months`, `not supplied`, selected from the supplied band table by `charge_tonnes_co2e` only. `automatic_detection_fitted` and `leak_found` are `yes`, `no` or `not supplied`. `retest_due` is one month after `last_check_date` where `leak_found` is `yes`, and empty otherwise.
8. `landlord-and-epc.md` - a short file stating, in plain sentences, the tenure, the EPC rating and certificate date, whether an exemption is registered and when the register was searched, the minimum standard wording with its source, and the dated written question put to the landlord with its answer or the fact that none has come. No conclusion about whether the landlord is in breach.
9. `gaps.md` - a numbered list of: every meter with `not supplied` in any contract column; every bill period with an `estimated` read; every standing-load row missing a reading or a time; every walk finding with `not supplied` in `time_source` or `load_source`; every refrigeration unit with no charge, no last check date or no engineer; every unit whose `next_check_due` has passed; every written question with no answer and how many days have passed; any missing source URL or read date; and the date fixed for the re-walk.

## Rules
- Codex measures, converts, prices and records. It never invents, never estimates a reading, a run time, a load or a rate, never rewords a supplier's or a landlord's text, and never makes the microbusiness, VAT or compliance judgement that was supplied to it.
- Never write a benchmark, an industry average, a typical overnight load, a kWh per cover figure, or a percentage saving. No such figure exists for a single independent UK venue and none is to appear in any file.
- Every pounds figure is computed from the site's own `unit_rate_pence_per_kwh` read from its own bill. No national, regional or published average rate is used anywhere, for any purpose, including as a fallback.
- Never write a verdict on microbusiness status, VAT entitlement, Climate Change Levy relief, or whether a landlord meets the minimum standard. `under_de_minimis_on_supplied_figures` describes arithmetic against a supplied threshold and nothing more.
- Never apply the temporary zero rate to a current bill. Record its start and end dates only, and where the start date is later than the date the file is built, say so in `vat-and-levy.csv` and in `gaps.md`.
- Never set `required_check_frequency` from anything but the supplied charge in tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent and the supplied band table, and never shorten or lengthen a frequency because of the equipment's age, condition or service history.
- A rule or a rate that has not commenced is recorded with its start date and is never applied to a current figure.
- Readings, times and charges are copied exactly as supplied, including their units. Where the site estimated any of them, the cell says `estimated by site` and the row appears in `gaps.md`.
- Use British English, GBP for money and DD Month YYYY for every date. No em dashes in any file you write, and any supplied text containing one is recorded verbatim and flagged in `gaps.md`.
- Every file ends with this line: this is a working document prepared for the owner to check with their supplier, their engineer, their accountant and their landlord before it is relied on; it is not tax advice and it does not certify compliance.

## Return
The absolute path of each file written, the row count of each CSV, the contract state and end date for every meter, the number of bill periods with estimated reads, the annual kWh for electricity and gas against the supplied microbusiness thresholds, the average kWh per day per meter against the supplied de minimis figures and the VAT rate read from the bill, the standing load in kilowatts per meter with the dates and times the readings were taken, the number of walk findings with a costed annual figure against the number without and why, the total annual cost of the costed findings and the three largest by pounds, every refrigeration unit whose next check date has passed, the EPC rating and whether an exemption was found on the register, the number of written questions outstanding with the oldest date asked, the re-walk date, and the `gaps.md` item count.