Reviewing a commercial energy quote

Three reviews, three moments

The word review hides three different jobs. A quote review is forward-looking: it reads competing supplier offers before you sign, and its output is a shortlist built on matched assumptions. A bill review looks backward at invoices already issued, reconciling them to the tariff and the agreement, and its output is a corrected baseline plus a list of charges to dispute. A renewal audit sits between the two — it runs the backward check first, then uses the corrected baseline to solicit replacement offers before the notice deadline. The documents differ, the timing differs, and being good at one of these is not the same as doing the other.

• Quote review: offers compared before signature, on matched terms.
• Bill review: invoices reconciled to the tariff and the agreement.
• Renewal audit: history checked, then replacement offers solicited before the deadline.
• Ask which of the three you are buying, because each produces a different deliverable.

What a bill review reconciles line by line

A bill review puts the invoice beside four other documents: the utility's tariff, the account's configuration, the meter data behind the read, and the supply agreement. The purpose is to find charges that one of those documents does not authorise. In practice the errors cluster, which is why a checklist beats a skim.

• Rate class and tariff: whether the premises is on the class its load and service voltage actually qualify for.
• Meter and billing multipliers: a wrong transformer or current-transformer ratio distorts every usage and demand figure on the bill.
• Meter reads: whether reads were estimated, and whether the later true-up actually reconciled the estimates to actuals.
• Usage and interval data: register or interval totals, duplicated or missing intervals, register rollovers, meter exchanges.
• Demand: billed kilowatts against the interval the tariff measures, often the highest fifteen, thirty or sixty minutes in the period.
• Ratchets and minimum demand: whether a prior peak was carried forward correctly, and whether the billing floor is the one the tariff sets.
• Power factor: whether a reactive-power or power-factor adjustment was triggered, and at the threshold the tariff names.
• Riders and pass-throughs: fuel or purchased-power adjustments, transmission and distribution riders, storm and capacity recovery, franchise fees.
• Taxes and exemptions: whether a resale, manufacturing, nonprofit or governmental exemption was applied, and whether the certificate was current.
• Credits and adjustments: deposits, rebates, outage credits and prior corrections that were earned but never posted.

How far back an error can be corrected

The lookback is set by state law and the utility's tariff, not by how far back an auditor is willing to look, and it is not symmetrical. Overbilling and underbilling are treated differently, and so are charges a utility bills and charges a retail provider bills. In Texas, a regulated electric utility must correct an overbilling for the entire period it occurred, while an underbilling backbill may not reach back more than six months from the date the error was discovered (16 TAC §25.28). Where a retail electric provider issued the bill, the customer is not responsible for a corrected charge unless the provider bills it within 180 days of the bill in which the underbilling occurred (16 TAC §25.480). New York caps a backbill at six months after the utility became aware of the cause, and limits the period itself to twelve months where the failure was the utility's deficiency or twenty-four months where it was not (16 NYCRR §14.13). The consequence is practical: raise the dispute in writing, period by period, with the bills and meter data preserved. A review that finds an error the utility can no longer be made to correct is a fact worth knowing before you count on it, not after.

• Texas, utility: overbilling corrected for the whole period; an underbilling backbill is capped at six months from discovery.
• Texas, retail provider: a corrected underbilling charge stands only if billed within 180 days of the bill in error.
• New York: no backbill more than six months after awareness; a twelve- or twenty-four-month period depending on whose fault the failure was.
• Raise the dispute in writing, name each billing period, and keep the bills and interval data.

The disclosure label, and who is actually covered

In Texas the standardised summary of a supply offer is the Electricity Facts Label, required by 16 TAC §25.475. It has to state whether the product is fixed-rate or variable-price, give the total average price for electric service expressed in cents per kilowatt hour, list the recurring charges and the fees that fall outside them, set out the term and any early-termination fee, and show both the product's renewable share and the statewide average generation mix. The average price is quoted at set usage levels so that two offers can be read side by side: for residential customers at 500, 1,000 and 2,000 kilowatt hours a month, and for small commercial customers at 1,500, 2,500 and 3,500, with a 30 per cent load-factor assumption where a demand charge applies. The catch is the class. The label runs to residential and small commercial customers, so a larger account gets no standardised one-page sheet at all; its price lives in the contract's own pricing exhibit. That is exactly why the review has to read the agreement rather than a summary of it.

• Fixed or variable, stated on the label rather than inferred from a sales call.
• Average price shown at prescribed usage levels so that offers are comparable.
• Recurring charges, fees, term and early-termination fee all itemised.
• Renewable share shown against the statewide average generation mix.
• Above the small-commercial class there is no standardised label: the contract is the disclosure.

Normalising two offers before comparing them

Comparison fails when the columns differ. Fix the term, the start month, the usage shape and the unit before any number is read, because each one moves the price independently of the supplier. Then convert every offer to the unit your bill uses and multiply the per-unit difference by the volume you actually consume across the term. That product is the decision, not the ranking, because a fraction of a unit either matters at your volume or it does not. Ask each supplier what happens at the end of the term it is offering, and compare only the components that genuinely differ — delivery is identical in every column, because the utility bills it whoever supplies the energy.

• Same term, same start month, same usage shape, same unit.
• Multiply the per-unit difference by your own volume over the term.
• Ask each supplier what its offer does at the end of the term.
• Delivery is identical across columns; compare only the supply-side components.

The clauses that change the real cost

Four provisions routinely move the effective price beyond the headline rate. A minimum usage or ratchet clause bills against a floor or a historical peak, so a site whose load has fallen pays for consumption it did not use. An indexed component passes market movement through, which changes the answer entirely in a volatile season. Early termination terms decide what leaving costs and are frequently calculated from remaining volume. And the end-of-term clause decides what happens if nobody acts — automatic renewal, a month-to-month default, or a rate the supplier sets at renewal. None of these appear in a headline rate, and each can exceed the rate difference you were comparing.

• Minimum usage and ratchet language, and how the floor is calculated.
• Any indexed component: which index, where published, how often applied.
• Early termination basis — flat fee or remaining volume.
• What the agreement does if no notice is given at the end of term.

Starting from the bills rather than from scratch

The lowest-friction entry point is the paperwork you already hold: twelve months of invoices for each account, the current agreement and its amendments, and the meter and service identifiers. A reviewer reconciles those invoices to the tariff and the contract first, because the corrected baseline is what any comparison has to run on — soliciting new offers from an uncorrected baseline simply prices the same errors into the next term. A letter of authorization lets the reviewer pull usage and interval data straight from the utility instead of assembling it by hand, which is often the difference between a review that starts this month and one that stalls. The engagement should name the states, utilities, tariffs, accounts and products it covers: a rate audit that does not say what it includes rarely includes what you need.

• Twelve months of invoices per account, plus the current agreement and its amendments.
• Meter and service identifiers for every account.
• A letter of authorization so usage and interval data come from the utility.
• An engagement that names the states, utilities and accounts in scope.

What a review can and cannot establish

A review can establish whether an offer is internally sound, what it actually covers, and where the risk sits. It cannot establish whether the price is competitive, because a single offer is not a market — that question has one honest answer, and it requires more than one supplier quoting the same account on the same assumptions. This is also why the incumbent's renewal number should never be read as a benchmark: it is a single data point from a party that already holds the account, and its position in the market is not disclosed by the number itself. Watch, too, for language that hands the decision back to the supplier — a rate described as "then-current", an agreement that renews at "market rate at the time of renewal", an "all-in" claim with no schedule behind it, or silence about what happens at the end of the term. The test is simple: if a clause cannot be pointed to in writing, it is not part of the offer yet.

• A review tests an offer's terms and coverage, not its competitiveness.
• One quote cannot show the market: several bidders on identical assumptions can.
• The incumbent's renewal number is a data point, not a benchmark.
• "Then-current" or "market rate at renewal" hands the pricing decision to the supplier.

Before acting on a quote

Availability depends on the service address, the meter and the utility that serves it, and competitive supply does not exist everywhere; the rules referenced here are Texas's unless another state is named. HighGround may receive compensation from providers on completed purchases. Submitting an inquiry places no order, switches no supplier and commits you to nothing — it starts a conversation about what your options actually are.

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