At 15.32 cents per kilowatt hour as of the end of 2016, Connecticut commercial electricity rates are 52% higher than the national average and the highest amongst the contiguous United States. So, it’s no surprise that businesses want to save more from Connecticut energy suppliers.
The good news is that advances in technology make it much easier to understand energy supply prices and manage energy usage accordingly, without negatively affecting your business.
Understanding Costs
Your monthly utility bill is not just the total cost from your Connecticut energy supplier. Instead, bills have both supply and delivery charges, along with taxes and fees, all of which makes utility bills tough to understand.
Another layer of complexity is that in Connecticut, customers can choose their electricity supplier, which can be different than the utility responsible for delivering the energy. So, while you might contract with a Connecticut energy supplier that tends to have lower rates than what you were paying through your main utility, your overall bill could still be higher if delivery costs or taxes and fees rise.
That’s why it’s important to start by getting a full understanding of the cost breakdown for your monthly utility bill, so you know what needs improvement.
Reducing Supply Costs
Energy prices per kilowatt hour can fluctuate widely, as supply and demand changes based on factors like the weather and time of day. As a result, your Connecticut energy supplier might charge you vastly different prices, but even when costs are up, they might not make more profit on their end. Rather, the prices reflect the market cost, and depending on your provider, energy sales might be completely decoupled from profits, so it is not as if your utility is rooting for you to consume more energy.
Still, there are ways to reduce supply costs, namely by monitoring energy prices and adjusting accordingly.
One way to do so is to use energy analytics software (EAS) that provides insight into costs, so you can see how adjustments like running processes during the afternoon compares to doing the same at night. With this knowledge, businesses can shift processes accordingly so that they consume energy when prices are lower.
In some cases, when a company has offices in multiple locations, it could even be beneficial to try to switch processes to another office to avoid periods of high supply costs. A manufacturer with factories in several states might want to slow down production in Connecticut during a heat wave, for instance, and shift production to a state experiencing milder weather, since energy supply costs tend to be higher during warm weather.
Look for Incentives
Aside from the cost of energy itself, businesses might be able to save more from Connecticut energy suppliers if they can cash in on incentives like energy efficiency rebates.
While costs might not be lower from the supplier itself, a business that gets its energy supply from renewable sources could be eligible for benefits like tax credits. In these cases, it could even be beneficial to choose a Connecticut energy supplier that has slightly higher supply costs for providing renewable energy, since overall costs would be lower.
And in all of these cases of trying to save more from your Connecticut energy supplier, it’s important to have visibility into your costs, including insight into how your utility bill breaks down, so that you can maximize your opportunity to reduce expenses.
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.