How Do Demand Charges Impact Your Electric Bill?

As a restaurant owner/manager, you accept that there are some fixed operating costs. Lot rent, electricity, water, sewer, staffing costs, etc. all are things you cannot avoid.

Once you have established operational hours, electricity costs should remain relatively fixed, or at least one would logically assume so.

However, in many cities across the United States, this is not the case thanks to demand charges. These charges can greatly affect your restaurant.

What Is A Demand Charge?To understand how demand charges effect restaurants, it is important to understand what they are, how they work, and why energy providers use them. Understanding how and why you are billed helps you prioritize which measures to implement to save you energy in the long run.

Energy companies bill in two ways: meters and demand charges. You are likely most familiar with metering, where every month someone comes to read your meter to determine how many kilowatt hours (kWh) you have used during your billing…