Mobile client has a campus with 4 buildings served by 4 separate Alabama Power meters. Each building peaks at different times. Building A peaks at 11am, Building B at 2pm, Building C at 4pm, Building D at 6pm. Individual building demands are 180, 220, 195, and 160 kW. If they were on one meter the coincident peak would be roughly 520 kW instead of 755 kW total across all four meters. But combining onto one meter requires utility engineering work. Is it worth pursuing?
Multiple meters vs single meter ? demand charge implications
Eugene ? the non-coincident vs coincident demand difference is significant. 755 kW billed across 4 meters vs approximately 520 kW on a combined meter is 235 kW of demand charge savings. At Alabama Power commercial demand rates thats roughly $2,350 per month or $28,200 annually. But the cost to combine ? new switchgear, possibly a new transformer, utility engineering fees ? could be $80,000-120,000. Still a reasonable payback.
Henry ? $80,000-120,000 for the electrical work is what the clients electrician estimated. At $28,200 annual savings thats a 3-4 year payback. But Alabama Power also charges a facilities charge based on transformer size. A larger combined transformer might increase the facilities charge enough to offset some of the demand savings.
Eugene ? before spending $100,000 on meter consolidation, check whether Alabama Power offers a campus rate or aggregated billing provision. Some utilities will mathematically combine the meters for billing purposes using coincident demand calculation without requiring physical consolidation. Duke in Dallas offers this through their Rate CS Campus Service tariff.
Patricia raises the right question. In Tallahassee, the city utility offers an aggregated demand provision for multi-building campuses under single ownership. They read each meter individually but bill demand on the coincident peak across all meters. No physical changes needed. Saved a church campus $8,400 annually ? 3 buildings, 3 meters, aggregated demand billing.
Patricia and Brenda ? Alabama Power does have a campus service provision but its limited to accounts where all buildings are within a defined property boundary. My clients campus qualifies. Applied for aggregated demand billing. If approved the savings come without any capital expenditure.
Update: Alabama Power approved the campus aggregated billing. Coincident demand billing started in January. First months savings was $2,180 compared to the four separate meter bills. Annualized thats $26,160 in demand charge savings with zero capital expenditure. Campus aggregation should be on every auditors checklist for multi-building clients.
In Cedar Rapids, Alliant Energy has the opposite problem ? they COMBINE meters for demand billing that should be separate. Had a client with two unrelated businesses at the same address sharing a service entrance. Alliant was billing combined demand across both businesses on one account. Splitting into separate accounts reduced total billed demand because neither business peak coincided with the other.