Industry
Commercial electricity for commercial office
Weekday-shaped load driven by HVAC, lighting and plug loads, with substantial off-hours waste.
Commercial office typically run a low to moderate load factor, which means demand charges and rate schedule fit usually matter more than the supply rate. Weekday-shaped load driven by HVAC, lighting and plug loads, with substantial off-hours waste.
Classic weekday shape. The number worth checking is the overnight base — if it is not close to the bottom of this curve, the building is conditioning empty floors.
Illustrative shape, not measured data. It shows the pattern this kind of operation tends to follow, which is why its bill behaves the way it does. Your real profile comes from your own interval data, and it is the only version that can produce a number.
What the federal building survey says
In 2018 the U.S. Energy Information Administration surveyed 6,436 commercial buildings and recorded the electricity each used. These are the surveyed buildings that match commercial office, in kWh per square foot per year. Each is a whole building classed by what fills the most of it, so a single tenant space inside a larger building can use more or less.
Office building
10.2kWh per sq ft a year, median
The middle half of surveyed buildings used 6.1 to 15.7. Nearly all fell between 4.0 and 24.8.
A typical one is 5,000 sq ft. At the median that is about 50,950 kWh a year, roughly $640 a month at the US average commercial price.
1,329 surveyed buildings Solid
Estimate your buildingSurvey year 2018, so this is the usage pattern, not a forecast. Prices here are today's: the US average commercial price for the 12 months to the latest EIA month. The cost estimator does the same for your own floor area and state.
What drives the load
- HVAC and air handling
- Lighting
- Plug and IT load
- Elevators
- Server and communications rooms
The trap this industry falls into
Office buildings commonly run substantial load outside occupied hours because schedules were set once at commissioning and never revisited after a tenancy or hours change. The building is paying to condition empty floors.
What to actually do
- Compare overnight and weekend consumption against the occupied baseline
- Review building automation schedules against current tenancy
- Check server room cooling for over-provisioning
- Verify lighting controls in low-traffic areas
Which half of the bill to attack
A commercial bill splits into supply, which a competitive supplier can price where a competitive market exists, and delivery, demand, fixed charges and riders, which stay regulated whichever supplier you use. Load factor decides which half is worth your attention, and for commercial office the answer is usually clear.
At a low to moderate load factor, the peak is doing disproportionate damage relative to total consumption. Demand charges and rate schedule fit therefore usually matter more than the supply rate, and an operator who switches supplier to chase a lower supply price has left the growing part of the bill untouched.
This is also why a supply quote alone is a misleading answer for this industry. It is priced against the half of the bill that is not the problem.
The mechanics behind this: load factor, demand charges and rate schedule fit.
What we need to give you a real answer
- 12 months of bills, interval data preferred
- Occupied hours by tenancy
- Building automation schedule
- Rentable area and occupancy
The item that most often turns a vague conversation into a specific finding is twelve months of peak kW. A single bill shows what you paid; twelve months of demand readings show the shape that caused it, and the shape is where the recoverable money is.
Send one recent bill. We compute the supply, delivery and demand split for your account and tell you which of the levers above is actually worth your time.