Somewhere in the middle of the scale is a an area that does afford some opportunity for cost control ,but does not offer a typical free market of suppliers and service levels from which to choose and with whom to negotiate. These markets are the commercial gas and commercial electricity markets. Deregulation in the late 20th century has afforded nominal benefits of competition such as supplier choice, but the existence of truly competitive pricing, incentives, unique service propositions or marked point of difference between suppliers is actually somewhat limited.

In fairness to the suppliers, most are only re-sellers, particularly in the case of gas where we are ever more heavily reliant on imported fuel. With this business model come limited capacity for aggressive pricing. However, at Online Energy, we can help your business to obtain the best possible pricing from all of the available suppliers to secure the best possible commercial gas and electricity pricing.

This can only be achieved through detailed market knowledge of commercial gas and electricity, but this is precisely what we possess.

We have been brokering commercial gas and electricity since 1993 and are truly experts in this field. With a well established network of supplier contacts and the expert market knowledge to understand the key price drivers, we are able to identify the optimum fixed price deals or the best flexible rate providers for your business needs.

The business energy markets and their pricing is already hugely complex with normal market dynamics being skewed by many factors. Previously nationalised giants such as British Gas dominate the market place and for the majority of businesses there is only one fixed delivery conduit for gas and one for electricity (these conduits being the national grid.) This restriction limits the truly competitive nature of supply of commercial gas and commercial electricity.

Pricing is influenced further by complex global dynamics. Oil has a direct impact on the cost of electricity and oil itself has endured a rollercoaster ride of pricing during the early 21st century. Global recession ceased a seemingly relentless upward trend in pricing to almost everybody’s surprise, but as we enter the second decade of the millennium, despite challenging conditions, many indicators appear to show that the escalator of inflation has re-established its upward path for commercial gas and electricity. This means there may be a lot to gain by securing pricing immediately.

Unlike many costs attributed to business, commercial gas and electricity can be a very tricky area in which to secure truly competitive pricing or the long term fixed pricing that may be essential to providing stability. For many manufacturing industries where commercial energy is an extremely substantial outlay, the ability to manage these costs may not only benefit the bottom line, but it may be the means to survival in difficult trading times.

Our mission at Online Energy is to assist businesses to secure the pricing that will either simply help them manage their costs or possibly make a critical enhancement to their bottom line.

Commercial gas and electricity are services that businesses desire to reduce their costs. Not only is there a cost benefit to this in its own right, but businesses are set to come under more and more pressure from local, national and European tiers of government to reduce consumption through carbon trading schemes and other such measures. As part of our package of services and utilising our expert knowledge in the field of commercial gas and electricity, we can assist businesses in navigating the maze of incentives and regulations that are continually evolving to affect businesses and their consumption of commercial gas and electricity on a daily basis.

One of the costs common to almost all businesses in terms of their needs is that of cheap commercial gas and cheap commercial electricity. Whilst the usage of these two utilities will vary between different businesses, there are very few business models where they are not, at the very least, a noticeable cost on the bottom line. Despite this common usage and significant costs of these essential utilities, there are very few businesses with an in depth understanding of the markets from which they are sourced and comparatively minimal effort is spent reducing cost prices themselves.

Most businesses, when challenged with reducing the costs of commercial gas and electricity will focus on reducing consumption. Whilst this is both sensible and necessary, at Online Energy we wish to help your business secure the best available supplier prices for your business needs in addition to advising on how to optimise commercial gas and electricity usage.

We aim to provide the detailed, expert market knowledge of commercial gas and electricity markets that is missing from most businesses. Working in partnership with yourselves, we provide access to pricing and fixed contract pricing that is simply not available without direct access to the right suppliers at the right times. These things can only come through years of experience and expertise.

It is exactly these niche commercial electricity price offerings that Online Energy can help to discover for your business. These may well afford your business an opportunity to achieve pricing which benefits your business in a way you have previously failed to realise.

Fixed price deals will never provide a headline-grabbing price that will get everybody excited, but in the current climate of sustained growth for business electricity prices over the long term, fixed pricing may well offer benefits in pricing security for periods of up to five years. If the next five years were to see pricing continue as it has over previous five, such a five year price plan would only have one major drawback; that being when the five year period ends and your business is faced with a significant price increase.

Securing the best possible commercial electricity pricing requires market knowledge and the help of an expert price broker.

Market analysts are predicting that the price of gas is likely to continue upwards in the long term. Prices are influenced by many of the factors that affect any business; staff, utilities, equipment, oil and exchange rates. In addition to these common influences, commercial gas supply is strongly affected by international politics.

These are all dimensions that heavily influence the cost to the suppliers of trading gas in the market place, but the way they then trade commercial gas is only nominally comparable to the free market supply of most other raw materials and services procured by businesses on a day to basis.

Other than bottled supplies, all commercial gas is supplied through the national grid by a limited number of suppliers. The suppliers themselves tread a difficult path, UK sourced gas is a perpetually rarer and rarer commodity meaning that ethical suppliers can only enhance margins through effective trading and managing their own costs. On the contrary, the suppliers seem very happy to maintain what appear to be conveniently high profit margins in the absence of open competition.

As a business consumer, the way to secure optimum pricing for commercial gas is to use a supply broker such as ourselves at Online Energy where we have the market knowledge and connections to identify the best pricing and contracts for your specific needs.

The price of commercial electricity is heavily linked to the cost of oil. Both gas and oil are presently still in abundant supply, but these supplies are not limitless and both natural resources see their costs of extraction steadily rising. In addition to the increased commercial costs of supplying these, both green and other local taxes continue to add pressure to the costs of commercial gas and electricity.

Clearly the long term trend is set to continue. However, in the short and mid-term, there will always be fluctuations in price, because as a procurement function for these utilities, you have two possibilities to benefit your business when buying commercial energy. You can either secure flexible pricing at the lowest possible rate or you can secure long term fixed pricing in to provide pricing stability, either because it is a safe option or through a gamble on a conviction of imminent increased costs of commercial gas and commercial electricity.

At Online Energy, we specialise in identifying the best available deals on both fixed and flexible pricing for both commercial gas and electricity. As an expert energy broker since 1993, we have helped many businesses to realise cost benefits they simply could not have done alone.

Almost all businesses would benefit through being able to manage these commercial electricity rates to a superior standard. The question then becomes: ‘How can a business manage these costs?’

There are no price comparison services for business customers and with only a small handful of commercial energy suppliers, there is definitely a lack of true competition.

The knack to securing competitive pricing is, as with any negotiation, knowing what is realistic to achieve and setting your stall out to secure that best possible deal. For different businesses, that deal will mean different things. A heavy gas user may compromise on the price of electricity to secure the best overall package or long term fixed pricing and the security offered may be more important that the lowest possible flexible pricing.

At Online Energy, we can help to assess how your needs will be best served and then go about establishing the best commercial gas and electricity deal in the market place to service your needs. We do this through specialist knowledge of the market place.

Despite many customers staying put with commercial energy suppliers, most customers would easily be able to identify a service that would help them to switch suppliers should they so wish. Despite commercial gas and electricity having nothing like the same price protection that is offered to domestic users, the existence of readily available price comparison services is somewhat more restricted than for the domestic customer.

Under normal ‘free market’ conditions, such services are fairly redundant, this is exactly what the buyer role exists for: to source goods and services at the best possible price for a given service level. While a (good) buyer most certainly won’t suffer from the inertia of some domestic consumers, the area of commercial gas and electricity is a difficult one in which to secure deals without real specialist knowledge. Complex geopolitics, imperialist conflicts and economic cycles have prevented a ‘free market’ from developing in commercial gas and electricity.

At Online Energy, we possess the expert knowledge to identify the market leading deals and commercial energy suppliers on behalf of our customers, which could be your business. These markets are very complex and dynamic, without the right skills to enter this market; you may find yourself longing for the price comparison site that simply doesn’t exist.

The commercial gas and commercial electricity markets do tend to be quite dissimilar to many other markets. Whilst de-regulation has clearly changed the landscape for obtaining these services, the product on offer does not lend itself to true free market principles.

The sheer scale of operations required to actually produce commercial gas and electricity preclude smaller providers from entering the supply markets and shaking up pricing. Pricing is also very heavily influenced by global politics and economic considerations. Oil has enjoyed a roller coaster ride of pricing in the last decade and gas supply is heavily influenced by a Russian state with many political challenges attached to it.

Couple these factors with the continued consolidation of re-sellers within the market place and the capacity for dynamic price competition almost disappears in the best possible Paul Daniels’ fashion.

The only possible way to secure competitive pricing for your commercial energy supply is to utilise knowledge of the markets to identify the best possible fixed-rate deals to ensure manageable costs on the bottom line or to identify which commercial energy suppliers are able to offer the best possible flexible pricing to minimise costs. Online Energy specialise in identifying such deals for our partner businesses. Our service is designed to help influence a major cost on the typical bottom line.