Industries
What drives a commercial electricity bill, by industry
Load shape determines which part of the bill is worth attacking. A restaurant and a cold store have opposite problems, and the advice that helps one actively wastes the other one’s time.
Load factor — consumption divided by peak demand times hours — determines whether supply price or demand charges dominate a commercial bill. Low load factor operations such as restaurants are demand-driven. High load factor operations such as cold storage are supply-driven. The right action differs completely between them.
| Industry | Expected load factor | What usually dominates | Typical use, kWh per sq ft a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Restaurants | low to moderate | Demand charges and rate schedule fit | 39.8 (23.1 to 58.8) |
| Retail and shopping plazas | moderate | Demand charges and rate schedule fit | 9.0 (5.1 to 14.5) |
| Warehouse and distribution | low to moderate | Demand charges and rate schedule fit | 3.3 (1.6 to 7.8) |
| Cold storage | high | Supply price and contract timing | Too few surveyed |
| Light manufacturing | moderate to high | Supply price and contract timing | Not in the survey |
| Property management and multi-site portfolios | varies by asset | Demand charges and rate schedule fit | Varies by property |
| Auto dealerships | low to moderate | Demand charges and rate schedule fit | 9.0 (5.1 to 14.5) |
| Medical and dental offices | low to moderate | Demand charges and rate schedule fit | 12.7 (7.6 to 19.7) |
| Hotels and hospitality | moderate to high | Supply price and contract timing | 14.1 (8.9 to 20.8) |
| Grocery and convenience | high | Supply price and contract timing | 47.7 (33.2 to 70.7) |
| Commercial office | low to moderate | Demand charges and rate schedule fit | 10.2 (6.1 to 15.7) |
| Fitness and recreation | moderate | Demand charges and rate schedule fit | 8.6 (6.5 to 16.5) |
| Schools and colleges | low to moderate | Demand charges and rate schedule fit | 9.7 (6.2 to 13.2) |
| Places of worship | low | Demand charges and rate schedule fit | 4.2 (2.5 to 7.5) |
| Nursing homes and assisted living | moderate to high | Supply price and contract timing | 20.0 (8.9 to 28.2) |
| Auto repair shops and garages | low to moderate | Demand charges and rate schedule fit | 4.6 (2.4 to 8.7) |
| Salons, laundries, car washes and other service businesses | low to moderate | Demand charges and rate schedule fit | 6.2 (3.1 to 10.7) |
| Self-storage facilities | moderate | Demand charges and rate schedule fit | 3.3 (1.6 to 7.8) |
Load factor bands are analytical expectations about load shape used to prioritise work. They are not survey statistics and they are not a substitute for reading a specific account. Typical use is the median of the surveyed buildings of that type in the federal 2018 building survey, with the middle half in brackets; where the survey has too few buildings of a type, or none, the cell says so. Estimate your own building.
Why this distinction decides the advice
Two commercial buildings can use identical annual kilowatt-hours and receive completely different bills, because a bill is priced on both how much you use and how hard you draw. A restaurant concentrates its draw into service periods; a cold store draws steadily around the clock. The restaurant pays disproportionately for its peaks; the cold store pays for its volume.
That single difference reorders everything downstream. For a low load factor operation, demand charges and rate schedule fit usually carry more recoverable cost than the supply rate, and those live in the regulated half of the bill that no supplier can quote on. For a high load factor operation, the supply contract and its renewal timing genuinely are the main event.
Most advice in this category ignores the distinction entirely and recommends switching suppliers to everyone, because switching is the only action that pays a commission. That is why an industry page here starts with load shape rather than with a rate.