When it comes to utilities, “cost” is everything. Even more so savings. These are expenditures that are regularly deducted from your monthly budget and being smart about them will significantly decrease the bulk of your expenses.
Below are a few steps you can follow in finding the best energy deals for economical energy tariffs for your business.
How To Find The Best Energy Deal
- Rate The Rate Plans Offered
The error many businesses (and households alike) make is NOT comparing rate plans. To find the provider that best meets your needs, you should compare electricity rates offered by different providers. Typically, businesses have two choices – fixed-rate plans and variable-rate plans (options vary depending on your supplier).
Fixed-Rate
To give these two a brief rundown, fixed-rate plans have, as their name suggests, “fixed” or locked-in pricing. Businesses that have a near-similar energy utilization each month will greatly benefit from these. They’re also an approach towards allowing you to closely monitor consumption and stick to the outlined and fixed plan.
Variable-Rate
Variable-rate plans are highly dependent on various factors such as the energy market in your locale, mandated consumption-to-pricing movement depending on your region’s temperature shifts per year, weather and/or climate shifts in general, the list goes on.
For those who are well-versed in keeping up with energy market fluctuations, you will find this plan most suitable for you.
- Control Versus Extraneous Variables
Aside from the cost of your energy consumption, there are several factors that add to the overall fee for every bill you receive. Although these will greatly depend on your contracted deal with your supplier, said additional factors are as follows:
Capacity
This refers to how much energy is readily available at certain “peak” timeframes, whether within a 24-hour cycle, a 7-day cycle, a monthly cycle, etc. It’s a marker that energy companies rely on to have an estimation of what the grid’s capacity is so that electricity outages can be avoided as much and as often as possible.
Delivery
“Delivery” here talks of the movement and/or transportation of power through power lines. It encompasses meters and gas pipelines as well. The cost of this constant operation is placed atop regular energy consumption.
Ancillary
There are several services energy suppliers offer their customers, each one differing in the type of service required/ requested. These include, but are not limited to, voltage control, regulation and/or monitoring, regular inspection, black start or internal power restoration and/or recovery, etc.
Transmittance
If “capacity” speaks of transference through power lines, “transmittance” is about moving energy from the main power plants towards local substations.
- Contract Length (Plus Flexibility Or Non-Flexibility)
Know what the contract length is. In practical, your energy supplier will provide you with these details because the law instructs them to do so. The problem is that many customers fail to be proactive in mapping out their business’s projected energy consumption, and comparing these pieces of vital information with the contract length and terms.
Observe due diligence in this step for you to have a better understanding of what type of contract will be most advantageous to your business property.
