Process load
is priced differently — and most sites never find out
Once a site is large enough, its power bill stops being a simple function of how much it uses. Capacity, demand and power factor charges enter the picture, billed on how hard the site pulls rather than on total consumption — and they are invisible to any comparison done on cents per unit.
What drives the bill
The load profile of a food production site
Before anyone quotes you a rate, it is worth being clear about what your site actually does with electricity — because that, not the headline number, is what decides whether a plan fits.
Peak draw is its own charge
Larger connections carry capacity and demand charges billed on kVA or kW. A single hard start can set a figure that prices a whole period.
Power factor costs money
Motor-heavy sites can carry a power factor charge for reactive load — real money on the bill, and entirely absent from a headline rate comparison.
Production is seasonal
A harvest or campaign season concentrates a year of consumption into a few months, which is exactly the shape an annual average destroys.
Heat is often gas
Process heat means the real utility position is electricity and gas together, usually on unaligned terms.
What a headline rate hides
For a site of any scale, the variable rate is only part of the story. Alongside it sit charges billed on capacity — the load the network has to stand ready to deliver — on measured demand, and in some cases on power factor, where motor-heavy plant draws reactive current the network has to carry without it registering as useful consumption.
A comparison that puts two cents-per-kWh figures side by side and declares a winner is simply not looking at the part of the bill where the difference lives.
Seasonality, honestly treated
Production businesses are frequently quoted on an annual average, which is the one shape that describes almost none of them. A grower or processor that runs hard through a season and sits near-idle the rest of the year has a profile worth negotiating on, and averaging it flat gives away the argument before it starts.
The same applies to gas for process heat, and to the trade waste volumes that come with a production run.
Where we look first
The review, in order
- Capacity, demand and power factor charges on larger connections
- Seasonal production profiles treated as seasonal, not averaged flat
- Electricity and gas renewal dates brought into alignment
- Trade waste classification and volumes against actual production
- Solar assessed against genuine daytime process load
These are clients, named with the same disclosure as our homepage. We do not publish any client’s figures, contract terms or savings — those belong to them, not to our marketing.
Questions
What food production operators ask us
Because part of every commercial power rate is a delivery charge set by the lines company for your area, and lines areas price differently from one another. Two identical cafes on identical usage, one in one region and one in another, do not pay the same rate — and a national average hides that entirely. Our rate lookup is keyed to your ICP’s own network and price category, so what you see is the rate that applies to your connection.
It compares two real numbers, not two guesses. The current side is what you actually pay — the monthly figure you give us, annualised. The new side is built from the real rates that apply to your ICP’s network and price category: your monthly kWh at the variable rate, plus the fixed daily charge for 365 days, plus our service fee, then grossed up for GST so it lines up with the total you read off your bill. We deliberately do not assume you are currently on a discount, which makes the estimate conservative rather than flattering.
No. It is an estimate built on the rates available for your connection and the usage figures you gave us — change either and the number changes. Savings are estimates and may vary; the final figures are confirmed in writing before anything is signed. This is not financial advice.
Not to get started — a first estimate takes under two minutes and needs no bill. When you want a full written proposal we do ask for a recent bill, because a proposal has to be built on your real charges rather than on a rounded number you remembered.
Bill Health Check
Three questions, no bill, no contact details. You get a straight read on where businesses shaped like yours usually have room — on this page, right now.
Other sectors we work in
Your site, your numbers
See what your food production site could pay
Your ICP, roughly what you use and roughly what you pay. Two minutes, and the comparison is run against the rates that genuinely apply to your connection.
No obligation · Fees agreed in writing before any switch