The shift
Time-of-use pricing has fundamentally changed how businesses are charged for electricity. The theory was sound: charge more during peak demand, less during off-peak, and let the market sort out efficiency.
In practice, the market has sorted out something quite different.
The reality
For most commercial operations, shifting load is not as simple as running the dishwasher at night. Manufacturing lines, HVAC systems, and refrigeration cannot be rescheduled around tariff windows. Hospitals do not get to choose when patients need care. Shopping centres cannot close during peak pricing periods.
The result is that TOU pricing disproportionately penalises businesses with inflexible demand profiles, which is most of them. Meanwhile, the businesses best positioned to respond are the ones that were already energy-efficient.
The data tells the story
We analysed interval data across 200 commercial sites last quarter. The average business was paying 23 percent more under TOU structures compared to flat-rate equivalents. The top quartile of energy-efficient sites saved 8 percent. Everyone else lost money on the transition.
The opportunity
The businesses winning at TOU are the ones with granular visibility into their consumption patterns. Interval data analysis, not guesswork, is what separates the winners from the losers here.
If you cannot see your 15-minute consumption profile overlaid against your tariff windows, you are flying blind. And if you are flying blind, you are almost certainly paying too much.