Your Warehouse Has the Roof. Your Factory Has the Demand. Can They Share the Electricity?
A business owns two sites. One has an excellent roof and relatively little daytime demand. The other has poor roof space and consumes electricity continuously.
On a spreadsheet, the obvious answer is to send the surplus electricity from one to the other. Unfortunately, electricity doesn't recognise group company structures - moving it genuinely means one of a small number of real routes: a private wire, a licence-exempt supply arrangement, or a contractual structure like sleeving. Which one, if any, actually works depends on more than common ownership.
Physical and contractual electricity are different things
A private wire physically connects a generator to a specific site's demand. Licensed supply, by contrast, moves electricity through the public network under a supplier's licence. Sleeving and matching arrangements are contractual constructs layered on top of the public network, not physical connections. Common ownership of two meters doesn't merge them into one - each remains its own point of physical connection and settlement, regardless of who owns the company on the bill.
Electricity doesn't recognise group company structures.
The main routes
Depending on the sites involved, a handful of structures can genuinely connect generation at one location with demand at another:
- Private wire - a direct physical cable between generator and consumer that doesn't rely on the public distribution network for that specific transfer. That's a statement about the physical connection, not a statement about regulation - licensing exemptions, safety rules, land rights, metering and third-party access obligations can all still apply to a private network
- Licence-exempt supply - a legal status available only where a specific arrangement satisfies statutory exemption conditions, not a commercial product you can simply choose. "Licence exempt" is a legal conclusion about a particular supply arrangement, arrived at case by case - it isn't a route that's automatically open just because two sites are commonly owned
- An export PPA - selling surplus generation to a third party via the public network, rather than to the site's own other locations
- Sleeving or a corporate PPA - a supplier-mediated contractual arrangement matching a generator's output against a specific customer's demand
- Local or community supply models - increasingly relevant as settlement rules evolve for smaller, local schemes
What actually determines viability
Distance between the sites, land rights along any physical route, the local network's own configuration, how well the two demand and generation profiles actually line up, metering arrangements, whether a supplier needs to be involved, applicable licence exemptions, the transaction cost of setting the whole thing up, scale, credit standing, and the legal structure connecting the two sites all matter - often more than the headline "we own both, so why not" logic suggests. Where a real project's viability turns on qualifying for a licence exemption or a specific private-wire structure, that's a determination worth taking proper specialist legal advice on - this article explains the landscape, it isn't a substitute for testing your own arrangement against the actual rules.
Why the matching question still matters, even when a full sharing structure isn't viable
Even where physically moving electricity between two sites isn't practical, understanding how well their profiles would match is genuinely useful - it can inform export contract negotiations, PPA design, battery sizing decisions, private wire feasibility, and even where to prioritise future generation within a portfolio.
Settlement reform is real, but it isn't a blank cheque
Industry settlement rules have been evolving to reduce some of the barriers facing licence-exempt and community supply arrangements specifically - genuinely useful progress for schemes that qualify. It's worth being precise about what that does and doesn't mean: it reduces friction for certain categories of arrangement, it doesn't create a universal right to move electricity freely between any two commonly-owned sites, and whether a specific proposal is viable still depends on the same practical factors above.
Three illustrative situations
An adjacent factory and warehouse. Physical proximity makes a private wire genuinely worth investigating, though land rights and construction cost still need testing properly.
A landlord and tenants on one estate. Local supply or sleeving arrangements can work well here, but usually require the landlord to take on a genuine administrative and commercial role, not just host the equipment.
Remote solar and a geographically separate demand site. Usually the least straightforward of the three - typically resolved via an export PPA or corporate sleeving through the public network rather than any direct physical connection, since distance generally rules out a private wire.
Each of these has a plausible route, a main obstacle, and specific things that need testing before committing to it - none of them are automatic.
Sources and further reading
- The Electricity (Class Exemptions from the Requirement for a Licence) Order 2001
- Related: Why the Cheapest Battery Quote Is Often the Most Expensive Project
The fact that two sites belong to the same organisation doesn't mean electricity can move freely between them. But with the right physical, contractual and regulatory structure in place, surplus generation can be worth considerably more than a default export rate. If you've got generation at one site and demand at another and want to know what's actually possible, get in touch.