Connecticut electric rates remain high and have a meaningful negative impact on local businesses, but companies do not have to sit back helplessly.
Similar to how car drivers can take many actions on their own to offset the price at the pump, businesses can effectively reduce Connecticut electric rates through the use of energy analytics to optimize their energy management.
Analyze Billing
To start taming high Connecticut electric rates, businesses should do a thorough analysis of their utility bills, which can be done through an energy analytics software platform (EAS). Just like an accountant or online platform can help you navigate paying income tax and find ways to reduce your effective tax rate, EAS — potentially along with a consultant — can help you optimize your bills considering all the rate classes, tariffs, tax credits and other complexities. In some cases, you simply might be overcharged on your energy costs and want to correct that.
To the trained eye, and with the help of insights derived from EAS, these money-saving opportunities can easily be found and you can then take specific actions to reduce your effective rates. For example, the state’s Energize Connecticut initiative provides a rebate for high efficiency air conditioning and heat pump systems. This rebate can make the initial investment easier to handle, and from there, the system will save money by using less energy than the previous one.
Optimize Energy Usage
In addition to utility bill analysis, EAS can be used to optimize energy usage to keep costs down, both in terms of using less energy and using it at the right times.
For instance, if a business is looking to curb the energy usage of their HVAC equipment, they can use energy analytics to better understand the costs behind using that equipment and determine operational inefficiencies in how it is used. Perhaps costs are unnecessarily high because the system is running at the same level 24 hours a day, when in actuality, it could be reduced during certain hours. In this regard, high Connecticut electric rates can actually be considered a catalyst to optimizing energy usage, similar to how car drivers might pay more attention to efficiency measures, like maintaining a consistent speed, when gas prices are particularly high.
Of course, businesses also want actual prices to be lower too. Even though Connecticut electric rates are among the highest in the nation, prices fluctuate. In July 2016, for instance, commercial electricity cost an average of 15.53 cents per kWh in Connecticut, and that dropped to 15.32 in December 2016. With EAS, businesses can more easily track these price movement in real-time, which is especially useful when prices change intraday, in addition to the month-to-month swings.
As a result of this insight, companies can shift processes to times when prices are lower than normal and reduce usage during high-cost periods.
In the event that a company is unable to reduce energy usage during when Connecticut electric rates are high, they might benefit from having distributed generation assets that can provide energy separate from their utility company. These assets may even be eligible for financial assistance, such as with Connecticut’s microgrid financing program.
And EAS ties it all together by analyzing optimal times to use a microgrid over the traditional grid, based on energy prices, thereby making Connecticut electric rates easier to swallow.
Request a complimentary energy efficiency assessment to find out how Artis Energy’s RTIS® energy analytics platform can provide you with the visibility and insight to transform energy from a fixed cost into a distinct competitive advantage.