Utility Bill Auditing
Utilities make billing errors. More often than most people realize.
Alden Energy Consulting can review your utility bills for errors, overcharges, and billing inconsistencies — and handles the resolution process so you don't have to.
What This Service Is
Utility bill auditing is a systematic review of your electricity and natural gas bills to identify errors, misapplied rates, demand calculation mistakes, incorrect meter reads, and other billing issues that result in overcharges.
Commercial utility bills are complex documents. Most businesses pay them without scrutiny. That's understandable — reading a commercial electricity bill requires familiarity with tariff structures, rate classes, demand measurement methodology, demand ratchet provisions, and supplier contract terms. Errors can go undetected for months or years.
We find them.
What Alden Brings to the Table
We've reviewed hundreds of commercial utility bills across Texas and other deregulated markets. We know what to look for: misapplied rate classes, demand ratchet charges triggered incorrectly, billing period errors, meter read anomalies, incorrect tax or fee applications, and contract terms not being honored by the supplier.
One area that comes up more than expected: sales tax exemptions. Certain organizations — nonprofits, religious institutions, manufacturers with qualifying processes — may be entitled to sales tax exemptions on their energy bills and may not know it. In Texas, you can petition the state to recoup up to 48 months of paid-in sales tax if you are eligible for exemption. We can identify whether this applies to your situation and help navigate the process. Many other states have similar frameworks, but each can have it’s own rules and nuances.
When we find billing issues, we handle the dispute process with the utility or supplier on your behalf. You don't spend time on hold with a utility billing department — we do.
We also serve as a single point of contact for ongoing billing issues. If something looks wrong on a bill, you call us instead of navigating the utility yourself. In our experience, customers who go through us tend to reach resolution considerably faster than those who contact the supplier directly — there's an incentive for suppliers to respond quickly when future business is on the line.
Frequently Asked Questions
How common are billing errors on commercial accounts?
More common than most expect. Demand ratchet provisions alone — where utilities bill at a minimum percentage of your peak demand over a rolling 12-month period — are frequently misunderstood and sometimes misapplied. In our experience reviewing commercial bills, a meaningful percentage have at least minor errors, and a smaller but significant number have material overcharges recurring over multiple billing periods.
How far back can errors be corrected?
It depends on the utility and the nature of the error. Texas utilities generally allow credits going back a limited number of months for certain error types. We'll tell you upfront what's recoverable.
What does this cost?
For comprehensive audit work, we typically work on a contingency basis for recovered overcharges — meaning we only get paid if we find and recover something. We'll discuss the specific arrangement before we start. For those are already customers, anything basic would be covered.
Do you handle both electricity and gas bills?
Yes — both electricity and natural gas, across deregulated and regulated markets.
What if we have multiple locations?
Multi-site accounts are where auditing tends to find the most — more meters, more complexity, more opportunity for errors to accumulate unnoticed. We can handle portfolios of any size.