Multi-site commercial gas procurement

One supply agreement, several distribution tariffs

A marketer licensed in each jurisdiction can serve meters across several distributors under one commercial contract with you, but the operational obligations do not consolidate. Each LDC enrols the site, authorises the supplier, assigns the transportation rate schedule and settles imbalance on its own account. Gas delivered into one distributor's system cannot be balanced against a shortfall in another's, because the gas has to reach the right city gate first. The portfolio therefore has one price schedule and as many operational relationships as it has distributors.

• A meter in one territory cannot be netted against a meter in another; each LDC settles its own imbalance account.
• Supplier authorisation, credit review and enrolment are filed per LDC, not once per customer.
• The commercial agreement can be a single document; the tariffs behind it cannot.

The contract quantities are computed per meter, from that site's history

Consumers Energy publishes the arithmetic on its transportation programme: the Maximum Daily Quantity is the highest month of consumption across the most recent 36 months, divided by 30, then multiplied by 1.02 to convert Mcf into MMBtu. The Annual Contract Quantity takes the largest 12 consecutive months in the same window and multiplies by 1.10. Every distributor has its own formula and its own lookback, but the shape repeats: the quantity you reserve is derived from one meter's peak month, never from the portfolio's.

• Ask each LDC for its MDQ and ACQ formula and lookback window before modelling anything.
• At Consumers the 1.02 factor is a unit conversion and the 1.10 factor is headroom, not a discount or a penalty.
• The input is a billing month, so check whether the highest month used in the calculation was an actual or an estimated read.

The sum of the site peaks is not the portfolio's peak

This is where a gas portfolio diverges from an electricity one. Ten sites with January design days do not produce a portfolio whose January peak is ten times one site: weather is correlated across a region but operating schedules are not, and the site peaks rarely coincide to the hour. The reservation is still charged on the sum of the site quantities, because each is a separate contract quantity. Compute the diversity yourself by adding the site MDQs, finding the portfolio's actual coincident peak-day volume from daily or interval data, and dividing the second by the first.

• Diversity factor = portfolio coincident peak-day volume divided by the sum of site MDQs.
• A ratio well below 1.0 means you are reserving for a coincidence that does not occur.
• Where the tariff permits pooling, ask whether the pool can be balanced as one entity and whether quantities can be set on the pool rather than per meter.

Tolerance is a gas-on-the-system rule, not a percentage of the bill

On a transportation contract the LDC compares what you nominated with what you burned, and it expresses the tolerance against your annual quantity rather than your monthly usage. Consumers Energy's Authorized Tolerance Level is the percentage of ACQ a customer may hold in gas at the end of any month without penalty: 8.5% is standard, a customer may elect higher or lower, and the election can be changed once every twelve months. It also feeds the monthly delivery charges. Pennsylvania supplier tariffs run a daily tolerance around scheduled deliveries, with monthly imbalances outside it resolved by cash-out.

• Gas held on the system at month end is an asset inside tolerance and a charge outside it.
• Tolerance is set per contract, so ten sites can carry ten different percentages.
• The site with a new kitchen, a shutdown or a seasonal process change is the one that leaves tolerance first.

Capacity is a path, not a quantity

For a transportation site the marketer needs upstream pipeline capacity that terminates at the right city gate. Firm capacity into a Texas receipt point does nothing for a Connecticut site, and unused capacity at one end of a portfolio cannot be re-pointed at the other without the pipeline's agreement. Where the marketer does not hold its own long-term capacity it can use released capacity under 18 CFR 284.8: the releasing shipper's contract is not assigned, the pipeline reassigns the released capacity to a replacement shipper, posts and awards it by bidding where required, and bills the replacement shipper directly.

• Bidding is excused for a release to an asset manager, to a marketer in a state-regulated retail access programme, for more than one year at the pipeline's maximum tariff rate, or for 31 days or less.
• The short-term exemption carries a 28-day bar on releasing to the same shipper again under it.
• A release transfers use of existing firm capacity; it does not create new capacity, and recall rights are set in the release.

Pooling fixes imbalance, not reservation

Many tariffs let a marketer place several transportation meters in one billing pool with an appointed pool agent, so an over-delivery at one site offsets a shortfall at another and the tolerance is tested on the aggregate. Pennsylvania's supplier tariff language is explicit that each billing pool appoints an agent and that the company allocates volumes and imbalances among the pool's customers. What pooling does not do is change a site's own limits: the meter keeps its MDQ, its rate schedule and its critical-day obligations, and an operational flow order can still be issued against the individual site.

• Pooling is per LDC; two pools in two states settle separately, whatever the supply contract says.
• Ask whether penalties are calculated at the meter, at the pool or at the customer.
• A pool with one dominant site is a pool that site's weather runs.

The contract calendar is per LDC, so build it that way

Expirations differ because each site was negotiated separately and each distributor's notice rule is its own. The failure mode is not a poor price on one site; it is one site rolling to default supply while nine others are mid-term, which makes the next portfolio solicitation unrepresentative of the load you actually control. Work backwards from each LDC's switch and notice dates, and converge expirations deliberately if you want a single annual bid, including the season the term starts, because a term beginning in November is priced against a different curve from one beginning in April.

• One row per site: LDC, account, supplier, term, notice date, transport status, MDQ.
• Converge to a common date only where the notice rule allows the move without a gap in service.
• A winter-start term is a different product from a spring-start one; do not compare them as though only the volume differed.

What to send, and how a multi-site gas review runs

A gas portfolio is quoted by distributor and by path, so send the sites grouped that way rather than as one annual therm total, and expect a mixed answer: some sites will qualify for transportation and others will stay on sales service. Competitive supply depends on the service address, the meter and the LDC, and municipal systems, cooperatives and some jurisdictions have no retail choice at all, while transportation thresholds exclude smaller sites entirely. HighGround may receive compensation from providers on completed purchases; an inquiry places no order and switches no supplier.

• Twelve to twenty-four months of bills per site, showing billing periods rather than monthly estimates.
• Meter number, rate class, transport status and any existing MDQ, ACQ or contract demand.
• Peak-day volume, dual-fuel capability, and any planned expansion, closure or equipment replacement.

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