The utility bills the month's highest 15 minutes, whatever the rest of the month drew. We find the interval, name the loads running in it from the panel, move them out of it, and read the panel each month to show the peak stays down.
Three rooftop units start inside the same 15 minutes. Staggering them removes the interval that set the charge.
The demand charge bills one number: the highest average demand in any 15 minutes of the month.
A shape, and it describes no particular facility. Interval length, time-of-use windows and ratchets vary by utility and by tariff.
The energy charge bills the kilowatt-hours used across the month. The demand charge ignores all of them but one interval, the busiest 15 minutes, and bills that figure in kW for the whole month. On some tariffs it holds for the next 11 months too.
That interval is usually set by equipment starting together: rooftop units after a weekend, compressors after a defrost, chargers at shift change. None of it shows on the bill as a circuit, and all of it shows on the panel.
So the work is done at the board: find the interval, name what was running in it, move what can move, and read the panel every month to show the peak stays down.
Loads that land in the same 15 minutes and need not. Staggered or interlocked, the interval that set the charge no longer does.
Charging, pre-cooling, water heating and process loads that can run a little earlier or later without anyone noticing. Held under a limit by rules on a controller.
A fan at full speed for partial load, a dirty coil, a motor past its service. Each adds kW to every interval it runs in, the peak included.
What sets your peak, what it costs on your tariff, and what new load would do to it.
Which loads can move out of the interval that sets your charge, the change designed on your own demand, and each month's peak held under the target.
We read 12 months of your utility's interval data and find the interval that set each month's charge.
We place the peak in its day and its week, so it is clear when it lands and how often it returns.
We split the peak by circuit, from the panel record, and read a circuit directly wherever it was measured.
We price the charge on your own tariff, as it is today and with the load you are adding.
For what usually sets the peak at a property, a grocery, a plant or a hotel, see Lower Demand Charges.
Every 15-minute interval of the year, the same intervals your demand charge is billed on, with the tariff that prices them.
Loggers on the main boards and the key circuits for a month, so each load is read where it draws in the interval that sets the charge.
The breaker list typed from photographs of the board, so a kilowatt at the peak has a circuit name against it and not a guess.
Loggers are fitted and collected by a licensed electrician with the panel live, and they come off at the end of the window. Each change is read again at its own circuit the month after it is made.
The interval that set each month's charge, with its date and time.
From 12 months of interval dataThe loads running in that interval, named from the panel record.
Reviewed by an engineerThe peak measured again after the changes, against the month before, every month the rules run.
Every month the rules runPeak Demand Charges reads 12 months of your utility's interval data and meters the main boards for a month, so each load is read where it draws.
The daily rules run on a controller as schedules, interlocks and setpoint limits an engineer wrote and signed. It is ours, run by us, and every action it takes can be traced to a rule.
