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Home > Energy Efficiency Tips & Tools > Commercial Buildings > Calculate Your Usage
Calculate Your Usage
Track energy costs and usage
How much energy do you use? How much are you paying for it? The answers
will give you the "baseline" for calculating potential savings.
Find your energy bills for the last calendar year and the first part
of this year. If your energy use is somewhat erratic and you can expect
the same kinds of variations to continue, a three-year average may be
more useful to calculate a baseline.
Record your monthly energy charges and the amount of energy used. Be
sure to base your comparisons on actual energy use figures.
If your operation has been growing or contracting, you may want to pay
attention to an average annual use per employee, per square foot of area,
per unit of product, per hour of operation, or some other variable that
would enable you to relate your energy use to changes in size or level
of activity.
"Demand" savings (billed for kWh and kW)
In addition to being billed for the energy you use, you may also be billed
demand
charges. Reducing your electricity consumption may also reduce your
peak demand. If you are billed for both energy use and demand, track your
demand charges. Now that you have a basis for comparison, keep track of
your usage to see how any changes you make start to pay off.
We can help you do a self-audit
Tracking your bills to know how much you pay for your energy is important.
A self-audit will give you a better idea where your energy is being used.
We've included PDF forms you can download to do
your own self-audit. It's worth the effort, so you'll know where to
look for savings.
Energy charges
This charge is for the amount of electrical energy used during the billing
period, measured in kilowatt hours (kWh). A kilowatt hour is the energy
consumed by using one kilowatt of electricity in one hour. Based on a
declining block rate structure, different energy rates apply to different
amounts of consumption. With this structure, the charge per kWh decreases
as the use of kWh increases.
Demand charges
The demand charge is based on the requirement of the electrical system
to have enough capacity to supply the needs of all customers at any given
time (i.e. peak demand). If customers could reduce their peak requirements
such that consumption was closer to a constant rate (as opposed to peaks
at certain times of day or days of the year), the total equipment required
for generation, transmission, and distribution could be reduced. The demand
charge is an incentive for customers to manage their own peak demand requirements.
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