Facility executives who don’t understand how their power is priced have been disappointed when their energy projects failed to produce expected dollar savings, according to an article from Building Operating Management on the FacilitiesNet website.

Commercial electricity bills depend on a number of factors: how power is supplied and delivered, when it's consumed, voltage, and how fast it's used. Understanding bill’s variables can prevent surprises.

Your electric rate is spelled out in a document called a “tariff” that can be downloaded from your utility’s web page. A tariff should clearly spell out the costs for each component that is part of your rate.

Unlike residential electric rates, commercial electric bills are not based solely on the quantity of kilowatt-hours (kWh) consumed in a billing period (in the United States, that’s a month).  Instead, different rates may apply to how your power is supplied, how it is delivered, when it was consumed, its voltage, how fast it was used (in kW), and other factors.

Read the article.