An industrial electricity bill is not one price. It is a stack of separate charges — energy, demand, transmission, distribution, riders, taxes — each metered differently and each responding to a different behavior on your site. Most of them are never explained on the bill itself, because the bill assumes you already have the rate schedule in front of you. This section takes the document apart line by line: what a billing determinant is, which numbers come from the meter and which come from a formula, where the multipliers hide, and how to reconcile a statement against the published tariff. If you cannot say which line item a given hour of operation lands in, nothing else on this site will help you. Start here.
The piece that carries the subject. Read this one first.
An industrial statement is four different charges stacked together, each priced on a different determinant. Here is what every line means and which ones respond to timing rather than volume.
Everything underneath the pillar, in this subject area.
A 12-point electric bill audit for commercial accounts: meter multiplier, demand charge and ratchet arithmetic, riders and power factor. One bill, one tariff, one hour.
Billing determinants are the metered quantities a utility prices on your bill: energy, billed demand, kVA and power factor. What each one is and how to check it.
An estimated bill is a placeholder that gets corrected later. On a demand tariff the correction is not always straightforward, and it is worth knowing how yours is calculated.
A monthly bill tells you a peak happened. Fifteen-minute interval data tells you when, how often and what caused it — and it is usually available for free.
In a retail choice state the bill has two halves with two different owners. Shopping moves one of them. The demand charge usually sits in the half that no supplier can touch.
A kilowatt (kW) is a rate of electricity use; a kilowatt-hour (kWh) is an amount. What the difference means on a commercial bill, and why it changes savings math.
