How to Read Your Electricity Bill & Find Hidden Savings
If you’re unsure how to read your electric bill, Integrity Energy is here to break it down for you. Understanding your company’s bill is important, and it can sometimes lead to additional ways to save!
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Key Takeaways
Understanding how to read your commercial electricity bill can help your business identify billing errors, hidden fees, and opportunities to reduce energy costs. By reviewing key sections such as supply charges, delivery charges, demand usage, and contract details, businesses can better track energy trends and avoid unnecessary expenses. Consistently monitoring your bill and market rates can also help ensure your business secures competitive energy pricing.
- Reviewing bills regularly helps detect billing errors and unexpected rate changes.
- Demand spikes can significantly increase costs if not monitored.
- Expired contracts may automatically move businesses to higher default rates.
- Comparing energy rates with the market can reveal opportunities for better pricing.
How to Understand Your Electricity Bill & Why It Matters
Knowing how to read your utility bill is more important than you may think. Energy is often a top-three operating expense for commercial businesses, so if any hidden fees or clerical errors go unnoticed on your monthly bill, it can result in unnecessary spending. Knowing all the components and sections will make it significantly easier to notice any small changes, trends, and mistakes, saving your business’s bottom line and making it more efficient in the long run.
Commercial Electricity Bill Breakdown
Our analysts took the liberty of creating a graphic that details each section of your business’s energy bill. By breaking your bill into these numbered sections, your company will be able to notice mistakes, trends, and any changes when they occur.
1. Utility Account Details
This top section highlights your account details. It includes your company name, address, account number, and invoice date. This ensures it’s your bill for this billing period, so it’s important to check this first.
2. Total Amount Due
This section covers the total amount your business owes, as well as the due date. It’s essentially an overview of the entirety of your energy bill.
3. Supply Charges & Balances
This part of your bill covers what you owed previously, if unpaid, and the current supply charges from your energy provider. It’s important not to confuse these with your delivery charges from your utility company.
4. Energy Supplier Details
This piece of your bill outlines specific details about your energy supplier, if you have one. It’ll include its address and contact info if applicable.
5. Historic Energy Usage Graph
This small section shows a bar graph that represents your energy usage history over a period. This helps your business understand its energy usage and trends over the past months.
6. Delivery Charges & Taxes
Delivery charges from your utility company and applicable taxes, like sales and city taxes, make up this section. These are added to your supply charges and any previous balance to make up the total amount due.
7. Late Fees or Previous Balances
This section outlines your previous balances, new charges, and total amount due without any breakdown. This highlights what the rest of the bill shows in more detail.
Where Businesses Typically Miss Hidden Savings
Many commercial businesses are unaware of the savings they can achieve by paying attention to and knowing how to decipher their electric bill. Be on the lookout for these common mistakes.
Step-by-Step: How to Review Your Electricity Bill for Savings
If you want your commercial business to avoid missing any potential savings on its electric bill, you need to ensure that everything is correct each month. By making this a habit when receiving the bill, your business can secure savings, become more efficient, and avoid rate increases and clerical mistakes.
When Should You Work with an Energy Expert?
Without an internal energy procurement or management team, your business may struggle to find a supplier, rate, and contract structure that supports its unique operations. By partnering with an energy brokerage or procurement expert, businesses with multiple locations, high energy usage, upcoming contract expiration, or specific budget forecasting needs can receive professional support. Integrity Energy’s expert analysts work with your business to develop a personalized energy strategy that features the lowest rates from top-rated suppliers. We focus on your energy needs so you can focus on running your business.
Frequently Asked Questions About Electricity Bills
What does the electric bill include?
The electric bill includes information about your business and its chosen supplier, any charges that need to be paid, usage history, and other relevant information.
What’s the difference between delivery and supply charges?
Delivery charges are the cost of the utility delivering power to your house via power lines. Supply charges cover the cost of the actual electricity supplied to your home. This covers what you owe to your supplier.
How do I know if I have the best electricity rate?
By keeping up with energy market pricing trends or utilizing an energy broker to negotiate lower rates for your business, you can secure some of the most competitive electric rates.
What happens when my energy contract expires?
If your contract expires without getting renewed and your business doesn’t get a new provider, you will be placed on your utility company’s default SSO rate. This variable rate is typically higher than if you signed a contract with a retail energy supplier.
How often should I review my electricity bill?
Reviewing your electric bill monthly is a good habit to build. This ensures no costly errors are made, and your business can stay on top of its usage trends, saving money in the long run.
How far in advance should I shop for a new energy contract?
Most brokers would suggest 6 to 12 months before your contract is set to expire when you should begin looking to renew or find a new supplier. However, our experts work to lock in your future contract as far as 3 years in advance. With rates rising each year, locking in the rates of today can save your business money in the future!
Take Control of Your Energy Costs
Partner with Integrity Energy to begin experiencing the most competitive electric rates in your area. Transform your business’s energy procurement strategy by getting your free quote today!
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Makena Piepsny
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