Working on a TVA industrial account in Huntsville where they're pro-rating demand charges using total days instead of weekdays only. The tariff Schedule MSB clearly states demand proration should exclude weekends and holidays, but TVA is dividing by total calendar days. This is resulting in artificially low demand charges that will eventually get corrected and hit the customer with a huge back-bill. Has anyone dealt with TVA proration issues before?
TVA proration formula completely wrong - anyone know the correct method?
Albert, I've seen this with other utilities but not TVA specifically. The weekday-only proration is pretty standard for industrial schedules because demand typically occurs during business hours. Are you sure they're not applying some kind of load factor adjustment? Sometimes what looks like incorrect proration is actually a different calculation altogether.
Vivian, I triple-checked the tariff and it's definitely supposed to be business days only. The customer's demand occurs 24/7 anyway since it's a manufacturing plant. I think TVA's billing system is just programmed wrong. The difference is about $340 per month, so over a year that's significant money.
Have you contacted TVA's industrial customer service directly? Idaho Power had a similar billing system error that took 6 months to fix, but once they acknowledged it they backdated the corrections and paid interest. The key was getting it escalated beyond the regular customer service reps to someone who actually understood the tariff calculations.
Warren's advice is solid. Also document everything with screenshots of the tariff language and your calculations. We had a similar issue with PPL here in Pennsylvania where their billing system was using the wrong denominator for proration. It took written documentation and three levels of escalation, but they eventually fixed it and issued credits.