Reading a Commercial Utility Bill: The Fields We Underwrite First

Why the bill comes first

Satellite imagery tells you about a roof. Only the bill tells you what electricity actually costs at that meter, on that tariff, in that territory. Every credible model for a commercial or industrial site starts there.

The fields that matter

1. Utility and rate schedule. The rate code is the single most important field. It defines the demand rate, energy rate, time-of-use windows, and any standby or ratchet provisions. Two identical buildings on different schedules are different investments.

2. Billed demand (kW). The peak interval for the period. Track it across twelve months — the spread between the highest and lowest month tells you how seasonal the load is.

3. Energy consumption (kWh). Total usage, and where available the split across time-of-use periods. This sets the size of any solar offset.

4. Load factor. Consumption divided by peak demand over the hours in the period. Low load factor means spiky usage, which is generally where demand-side measures do the most work.

5. All the non-commodity lines. Delivery, transmission, capacity, and rider charges are often a large share of the bill and are not always reduced by the same measures that reduce supply cost.

6. Meter and account structure. One meter or many, and whether the entity on the bill matches the entity that would sign an agreement.

What twelve months adds that one month cannot

A single bill establishes tariff and order of magnitude. Twelve months establishes seasonality, whether peaks are weather-driven or operational, and whether any month looks anomalous enough to need explaining before it goes into a model.

What we do not do from a bill

We do not produce a savings figure from a rate sheet alone. Production estimates need site geometry and shading; storage dispatch value needs interval data. A bill tells you whether the site deserves that work.

If you want it read

Twelve months of bills for one representative site is enough to get a real answer. Upload them here — or read the delivery process first.