Made an embarrassing mistake early in my career that taught me a valuable lesson about load factor. Had a restaurant client on APS's general service rate complaining about high demand charges. Looking at the bills, their demand seemed high relative to their total usage, so I calculated what I thought was $8K in demand billing errors. Presented my findings to APS only to have them politely explain that restaurants typically have very low load factors due to equipment cycling on and off throughout the day. The client's 15-minute demand spikes were completely legitimate - they just had terrible load factor. Lesson learned: understand the client's business and typical load patterns before making any demand-related claims.
Why you need to understand load factor before making demand claims
Sarah, I made a similar mistake with a machine shop in Indianapolis. AEP was billing them correctly, but I didn't understand how their equipment operated. Big welding machines and compressors would kick on simultaneously and create huge 15-minute spikes, but then everything would idle for long periods. Low load factor is just part of their business model. Now I always ask clients to explain their operational patterns and major equipment before I start analyzing demand charges.
Good reminder Sarah. Georgia Power has pretty detailed load factor information in their rate analysis tools, which helps set expectations. What I learned is that different industries have completely different load factor profiles - hospitals and data centers run steady (high load factor), while restaurants and retail often have terrible load factor due to equipment cycling. Understanding this upfront prevents a lot of wasted analysis time and embarrassing corrections later.