Tariffs and grants / Supplier landscape / British Gas supplier profile

T-016·Tariffs and grants / Supplier landscape

British Gas supplier profile

Legacy supplier with fixed, EV, heat pump and SEG offers.

Company status, customer and market figures, and tariff terms in this profile were checked on 22 July 2026. Historical figures retain the date stated with them.

British Gas is the retail energy brand of Centrica plc, supplying gas and electricity to around ten million homes across the UK. It is the country’s largest gas supplier, and it was the largest electricity supplier until Octopus Energy overtook it in 2024. For a household running solar panels, a home battery, an EV or a heat pump, British Gas offers a specific tariff for each of those loads, a SEG tariff for solar and battery export and a smart-home range through its Hive brand.

Owned by Centrica, and the UK’s largest gas supplier

British Gas traces its origins to the Gas Light and Coke Company, founded in London in 1812 and incorporated by royal charter as the first public utility company in the world. The UK gas industry was nationalised in 1948, when the Gas Act 1948 merged 1,062 private and municipal gas companies into twelve area gas boards, and the British Gas Corporation was formed in 1973 to run the national supply as a single body. Privatisation followed in December 1986 under the Gas Act 1986, with shares floated on the London Stock Exchange through the government’s “Tell Sid” campaign. The company was criticised at the time because it remained the only organisation able to supply gas nationwide, so the sale replaced a public monopoly with a private one.

In February 1997 British Gas plc demerged into BG Group, now part of Shell, and Centrica plc, which took over the British Gas Trading retail brand. British Gas is now a wholly owned retail brand of Centrica, a London-listed company whose retail division also includes Bord Gais in Ireland and Centrica Business Solutions. British Gas markets itself as the UK’s oldest energy supplier, and it remains the largest gas supplier in the domestic market. It lost the top spot in electricity to Octopus Energy in 2024, and it has shed customers in several years over the past decade, including 224,000 residential accounts in the year to April 2016 and a wider Centrica loss of 742,000 in 2018. It is one of the “Big Six” suppliers that have long dominated the market, which had 17 active domestic suppliers as of September 2025.

Standard, fixed and tracker import tariffs

British Gas sells import electricity and gas across the usual range of UK tariff types. The default is its Standard Variable Tariff, capped by the Ofgem (Office of Gas and Electricity Markets) price cap and due to cost a typical dual-fuel direct-debit household around £1,862 a year from 1 July 2026. That figure moves whenever Ofgem resets the cap.

Fix & Fall, launched in May 2026, is a two-year fixed tariff whose price is set to fall on 1 July 2027 if wholesale prices have dropped by then. It costs around £1,719 a year for a typical dual-fuel household, with a £150 exit fee for leaving early. British Gas also runs a set of conventional fixed tariffs over 13, 14 and 24-month terms, with per-unit rates that vary by region, roughly 24p to 32p per kWh for electricity and 5.5p to 7.1p for gas, and exit fees of £50 to £75 per fuel. Its Tracker tariff follows the price cap but guarantees a standing charge £50 below it.

Switching between British Gas fixed tariffs carries no exit fee, so a customer can move to a new fix at any time without penalty. New customers can switch to British Gas in three to five days and have a 14-day cooling-off period. Prepayment (pay-as-you-go) meter tariffs are available, used by more than a million British Gas customers.

EV Power and the overnight charging tariffs

EV Power is the British Gas EV tariff, charging 9p per kWh off-peak between midnight and 5am, which comes to 35 hours of cheap electricity a week. The day rate and standing charge vary by region and contract date. One estimate puts the saving at around £330 a year against the April 2026 price cap for a driver covering 7,000 miles and shifting about 30% of other usage into the off-peak window. The tariff needs a British Gas electricity supply, a smart electricity meter and payment by direct debit, and it works with any EV and home charger. Applicants must have an EV they charge at home and may be asked for proof. EV Power replaced an earlier tariff, Electric Driver, which had a lower historical overnight rate.

Two related tariffs sit alongside it. Power+, previously called SmartCharge, gives owners of a Hive EV charger a 25% discount on the off-peak rate, taking it to an effective 6.75p per kWh. Charge Power is aimed at households with a home battery and gives half-price electricity between midnight and 5am. EV Power is a fixed-term tariff, but it can be left at any time with no exit fee.

Heat Power for heat pumps and electric heating

Heat Power is the tariff for homes with a heat pump, electric heating, an EV or a home battery. It gives half-price electricity for ten hours a day, from midnight to 7am and again from 1pm to 4pm, which comes to 70 hours a week. There is no separate premium peak rate: outside the cheap windows the household pays the quoted standard rate. The actual pence-per-kWh figures depend on the address and contract.

The tariff is open to homes with a heat pump, an electric heating system, an EV or a home storage battery. It needs a SMETS2 smart meter sending half-hourly readings, and where the household has a heat pump British Gas verifies that it is installed at the property. It works with the Hive system but does not require it, and it is open only to credit customers paying by direct debit, not prepayment. If the smart meter stops sending readings for 30 days or more, the account moves to the Standard Variable Tariff, and any household already on PeakSave is taken off it when joining Heat Power.

Exporting solar and battery power: the SEG tariffs

British Gas is a mandated SEG licensee, so it has to offer a tariff that pays small-scale generators for the electricity they export to the grid. Its export rates are being restructured from 6 July 2026. The rate for households that also buy their import electricity from British Gas was 15.1p per kWh until 5 July 2026. From 6 July 2026 it drops to 12p per kWh for systems up to 15kW, marketed as Export Premium, and 8p per kWh for systems above 15kW, marketed as Export Extra. Generators who do not take their electricity from British Gas are paid a flat rate of around 3p per kWh, and social-landlord VoidCare customers with systems up to 15kW are paid 6p.

The SEG tariffs accept PV, wind, hydro, anaerobic digestion and micro combined heat and power (micro-CHP), up to 5MW of capacity or 50kW for micro-CHP. A system needs an MCS or Flexi-Orb certificate, a grid connection agreed with the local DNO under the G98 or G99 connection rules and a smart meter that can provide half-hourly export readings. British Gas is one of the few high-paying SEG providers that will sign up a household with a battery but no solar. Payments are made quarterly by bank transfer, within 28 days of an export meter reading, and there is no exit fee or end date on the SEG tariffs.

On Ofgem’s SEG registration figures, British Gas was the third most popular SEG provider between April 2024 and March 2025, signing up more than 20,000 households, and its main customer export tariff was the fourth most popular single SEG tariff over that period, taking about 8% of all registrations.

Hive Solar Saver and the Hive smart-home range

Hive is the British Gas smart-home brand, covering a thermostat, EV charging, radiator valves, smart lights, plugs and sensors, and it works with Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit and Google Assistant. Hive products are sold separately and do not require a British Gas energy account, though British Gas customers get up to 15% off them.

Hive Solar Saver is a tariff-linked discount for people who buy solar panels or a battery from Hive. Since 22 May 2024, that purchase earns a 25% discount on electricity usage for 12 months, applied to the bill as a “Hive Solar Saver Credit”. It needs a British Gas electricity supply on the newer billing system, with an account number starting “A” or “BGX”, paid by direct debit and read by a smart meter. On a time-of-use tariff the 25% applies only to peak-rate consumption. The installation has to be completed within three months of accepting the quote, and the customer has to sign up within two weeks of the invitation email.

PeakSave: half-price Sundays and Green Flex events

PeakSave is the British Gas demand-shifting scheme, and it runs on any British Gas electricity tariff rather than being a tariff in its own right. It has two parts. PeakSave Sundays gives half-price electricity every Sunday from 11am to 4pm, or from 9am to 5pm for customers on the separate PeakSave Super Sunday tariff. PeakSave Green Flex adds opt-in events, short bursts of one to two hours, called when there is a lot of renewable generation on the grid. It needs a British Gas electricity supply and a smart meter, and the standing charge is not discounted.

British Gas reports that more than a million customers have joined PeakSave and saved over £46m between them since it began, shifting 55,000 MWh of electricity into off-peak periods and cutting 3,983 tonnes of CO2. Of that, PeakSave Sundays account for £36m and 40,000 MWh, with the balance coming from Green Flex events. More than 16,000 customers have saved over £100 each on Sundays alone. Average per-household savings are in the region of £25 to £30 a year on the company’s own figures.

Priority Services Register and the British Gas Energy Trust

The Priority Services Register is a free support scheme British Gas operates for customers in vulnerable circumstances: people aged 65 or over; those with a disability or long-term illness; anyone relying on medical equipment; families with children under five; and people dealing with recent bereavement, job loss or a hospital stay, among others. Registered customers can get advance notice of planned power cuts, bills in braille or audio, a free annual gas safety check, help reading the meter, free meter relocation, a British Sign Language (BSL) video interpreter, a nominated account manager and the £150 Warm Home Discount.

The British Gas Energy Trust is an independent registered charity (number 1179578), funded solely by British Gas since 2004, that gives energy-debt grants and money advice to any UK household regardless of who supplies its energy. British Gas says it has put £140m into customer support in recent years and contributed more than £92m to the Warm Home Discount, which it describes as the largest contribution of any supplier, and that it helped more than 300,000 customers with debt in the last year.

Customer-service record and complaints

British Gas points to a “Best Overall Improvement” award at the Uswitch Energy Awards for 2024/2025, though independent measures are less flattering. The Citizens Advice customer-service ranking for January to March 2026 placed British Gas outside the top eight domestic suppliers, which suggests below-average customer service. Recurring complaints in customer forums centre on billing errors and inflated estimates, communication and problems around smart meters and switching, with some customers escalating to the Energy Ombudsman to reach a resolution.

British Gas was among the suppliers investigated by Ofgem over the forced installation of prepayment meters. That led to a temporary ban on involuntary prepayment-meter installations for vulnerable customers in early 2023, and Ofgem brought in a mandatory code of practice in April 2024.

Applies to

Solar, Battery, EV charging, Heat

Last reviewed

22 Jul 2026