Industry
Education
Challenge
Elmira College, operating older campus buildings, needed insight into rising energy costs and potential billing errors hidden within complex utility invoices.
Results
NextEra Advisors corrected a utility service class error, securing a $22K refund and delivering $30K in annual savings on future energy delivery costs.
Product
Utility Bill Review
Challenge
Elmira College is nestled in the southern region of New York state. The college is noted as among the oldest colleges in existence today. With its substantial history comes older architecture and a need for innovative ideas on how to reduce energy costs.
Elmira College became a NextEra Advisors client in 2017, and with that new relationship came the wealth of knowledge and services that NextEra Advisors provides. NextEra Advisors reviewed Elmira College utility bills and energy usage data to develop energy saving goals and objectives and an energy procurement strategy.
Solution
While analyzing the school’s energy data and conducting a utility bill analysis, NextEra Advisors energy advisors looked for inaccuracies in supplier and utility costs, sales tax exceptions, and rate code usage. The energy consultants uncovered an error in the service class. A company’s service class dictates the rate at which the utility customer is billed by their utility company. The service class is classified by the amount of kilowatt-hours of demand that a customer uses in a given month. The client’s utility company had classified the college inaccurately.
It is not uncommon to have inaccuracies such as sales tax or supplier pass-through charges on utility bills, or to be assigned an incorrect rate code from a utility. Any one of these issues could cost a company thousands of dollars each year.
Seeing this utility bill error, NextEra Advisors found the correct classification and began researching the process for getting it corrected for the client, and understanding the amount of future savings Elmira College would see once the issue was fixed.
Results
NextEra Advisors worked with the client’s New York utility company and the client to have the service class changed. This resulted in a $22,000 refund from the utility for past payments made and a $30,000 annual savings on their future energy delivery costs.
