Alternate Tariffs

Smart Control. Stable Operations. Cheaper Energy.

If you’re weighing up a new retail offer, or your existing contract is up for renewal, the numbers on a retailer’s proposal only tell part of the story. Alternate Tariffs runs your plant’s own simulation model against alternative tariff structures, so you can see how each offer would actually perform against your real operating pattern, not a generic load profile.

This is particularly useful when comparing multiple retailer offers, or when a proposed structure includes unfamiliar elements like variable demand charges or time-of-use bands you haven’t operated under before.

How the assessment works

The assessment is run independently, using your actual historical load and the offers on the table, before any commitment to a contract change is made:

Assess plant load and site constraints. Establish the site’s real load shape from metered data rather than estimates, and identify any network imposed maximum demand limits or embedded generation constraints that shape what the site can operate at.
Build plant load and cost model. Set up a cost model of the site against its current tariff, so that every proposed offer is measured against the same baseline, not compared on headline rates alone.
Run historical load through proposed offers. Model the site’s actual load against each retail offer, including demand charges, time of use rates, and network charges, so the comparison reflects real usage rather than an averaged estimate.
Compare offers on a like-for-like basis. Rank the options once every cost component is counted, and test what happens if plant operation changes, or if a network operator introduces a maximum demand charge on feed in tariffs, which several are signalling as a future direction.
Develop business case and recommendation. Bring this together into a clear recommendation, the difference in annual cost between your current arrangement and the best option, and the sensitivity of that result to how the site operates.

The comparison is built to go in front of your board or procurement governance as it stands. If no offer is better than your current position, the answer is that too, and no change is made.

Negotiating the outcome

A contract change is a commercial arrangement between your organisation and your electricity retailer directly. Delprosa is not party to that agreement and does not negotiate on your behalf, but can support the conversation — assessing the options your retailer puts forward in response, re-running the same model against revised offers so you can compare what each is actually worth before signing, and supporting your own negotiation process with a quantified basis.

Where to start

This work draws on the same plant model used across all of Delprosa’s Energy Management work, so it can be scoped together with Demand Response or Tariff Optimisation depending on what your site needs first.

This is one of three ways Delprosa can approach your electricity strategy — see the Energy Management Overview for the other two.