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Reducing Energy Costs

Peak Shaving Evaluation Calculator

Peak Shaving System

Does your energy consumption vary during the day?

Are you paying over $10 per kW for electrical demand?

Would you say that your energy consumption "spikes" to values higher-than-average during one or more times during the day?

If so, you may be a candidate for on-site generation to supply a portion of your local electrical power. On-site (or distributed) generation can provide back up power during outages, but it can also provide power even if there is no outage. Why would you run a generator if there is no outage? You would when locally generated power is less expensive to produce than purchasing utility power.

Use this calculator to determine if distributed generation makes sense for your application.

	On Peak¹	Off Peak¹
kWh from bill ²		kWh

kWh cost ³

Demand is billed on⁴

kW kVA Not Billed

Demand ratchet period^4a

months

Billed Demand ⁵

Billed Demand cost ⁶

Billed hours this month ⁷		hours
kvar from bill ⁸		kvar

Service Voltage			Volts kV
PF from bill ⁹

Engine Fuel Source	Diesel	$/Gal
	Nat. Gas	$/MCF¹⁰

¹If your utility bill has only 1 or more than two billing catagories, put the most costly charges in the "on-peak" and the balance of the charges in the "off-peak"
²The total energy consumed this billing period.
³The total cost of the energy consumed this billing period. May include multiple charges such as "generation charge", "transmission charges", "stranded cost charges" or any other charge that is proportional to the number of kWh consumed.
⁴Select if you are billed for demand and if so, what are the units.
^4aIf your utility holds (ratchets) a peak demand for more than 1 month, select the value here. The longer the ratchet, the more attractive peak shaving will be.
⁵Enter the magnitude of the demand billing. The units will be whatever you selected under "Demand is billed on" above.
⁶Enter the total cost. If your bill is divided into less than 2 or more than two, just enter the highest billing period in the "on peak" column.
⁷Determine the number of hours this billing period that represent "on-peak" billing. If the bill does not provide this, you can calculate this by multiplying the number of days this billing period that have on-peak billing times by the number of hours in each of those days that are "on peak". For example: assume 4 weeks this billing period, of which on-peak billing is 8AM to 6PM (12 hours/day) for 5 days a week for a total of 60 hours a week and 240 hours per month.
⁸If your bill does not provide kvar, leave these fields blank. If your bill only provides one entry of kvar, put that value in the "on-peak kvar" field.
⁹If your bill does not provide this, leave blank. Sometimes this value is located in a separate billing line called "PF penalty" or "PF charge".
¹⁰MCF = 1000 cubic feet. Same as MMBTU (million BTU) since 1000 BTU=1SCF of natural gas.

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