Why You Need Help Procuring Energy

The energy markets have changed in three important ways:

1. Price volatility has increased significantly.
2. Demand and capacity charges have skyrocketed due to retirements of baseload power plants and insufficient amount of new dispatchable power coming on-line.
3. Lack of additional energy capacity for your business’ expansion.

The traditional energy procurement process of using a broker to get you the best deal is no longer adequate. Higher price volatility means the premium for a fixed rate power contract is now much higher, but does your load really expose you to the cost of the volatility? Understanding how your load fits into the supply and demand aspects of the market is key to getting the lowest price. This requires detailed load interval data and a procurement professional that knows how your load fits into the market dynamics.

An increasing part of your energy bill is demand and capacity charges. The PJM demand charge increased by 800% between 2024 and 2025 and is forecasted to go up from there. Since this charge is system wide, you can’t save money through procurement alone. You need an experienced energy market and procurement professional to help you plan and manage your load and generation to manage this skyrocketing cost.

Load growth is accelerating, and most utility regions have been sounding the alarm that we are running out of power. Rolling brownouts are forecasted to begin in the next couple of years and many businesses are seeing multi-year interconnection wait times for plant expansions. Procuring energy isn’t simply about today, but about making sure you have the right contracts and sources in place to support your business now and in the future.