Tariff Optimisation
Smart Control. Stable Operations. Cheaper Energy.
Not every site is ready or willing to take on spot price exposure, and that’s fine — there’s usually still meaningful savings available within your current retail tariff. Tariff Optimisation uses the same simulation approach behind Delprosa’s demand response work to identify operational changes — pump scheduling, load shifting within demand charge windows, timing around time-of-use periods — that reduce cost without changing your contract or risk position.
The output is the same as any Energy Management engagement: a plant-specific simulation showing what a change would actually do to your operation, not just your bill, before you commit to it.
How the control scheme works
Where the site has flexibility, such as the reservoir or storage head available at a wastewater or water treatment plant, a retail control scheme is developed and tuned to manage the plant’s load against the total electricity price, including the maximum demand charge. The scheme runs continuously and, based on the tariff in place, decides when the plant should run:
- Price-responsive control. When the price on the tariff is low, the controller builds up storage, filling the reservoir so the plant can ride through expensive periods by drawing that storage down instead of importing power. The level the controller targets moves with price, so the plant runs most when power is cheapest.
- Forecast look-ahead. The controller watches the price signal ahead of the current interval, so it positions the storage level before an expensive or high demand period arrives, rather than reacting after the bill has already been set.
- Maximum demand management. The scheme caps how much power the plant can draw at any moment, holding import at or below the site’s monthly maximum demand allowance. Because the demand charge is billed on the single highest measured demand interval each month, this cap is what stops one short peak from setting the whole month’s demand charge.
- Tuned to the site. The control settings — how aggressively the controller responds to price, the neutral price it balances around, and how it handles pump starts and stops — are optimised against the site’s own load and the specific tariff in place, so energy cost and demand charge are balanced together rather than treated separately.
For sites that also have generation on site, such as biogas cogeneration, solar PV, or battery storage, the same simulation treats grid electricity and on-site generation as a single coordinated resource, so a change never optimises one part of the operation at the expense of another.
Where control changes can be implemented
A tariff optimisation is not limited to the electricity bill. Because the same plant model drives the analysis, an engagement can extend naturally into a CAPEX business case where new or larger assets would strengthen the outcome.
Where a control change is identified, Delprosa can supply the control algorithm for your existing SCADA integrator to implement, or manage the integration directly as part of a project delivery engagement.
Where to start
The first step is a plant assessment that builds the same simulation model used across all of Delprosa’s Energy Management work, run against your actual metered load and your current tariff.
This is one of three ways Delprosa can approach your electricity strategy — see the Energy Management Overview for the other two.