SMARKIAhas participated as an expert in monitoring and energy bills along with other companies in the sector in the last webinars on energy monitoring, promoted by the Association of Energy Efficiency Companies (A3e), in which he presented:
- The steps to follow for the implementation of a Monitoring System.
- How to make the most of these systems to optimize energy consumption and eliminate unnecessary costs for the organization.
Due to the interest in these topics, the sessions were attended by more than 200 people.
One of the main concerns expressed by the attendees was the verification of the energy bill issued by the electricity company, and in case of detecting errors, how to claim them.
Based on our experience, these situations are more frequent than it may seem among large energy consumers. Therefore, this article and the cases presented will be of interest to learn about another advantage of implementing SMARKIA in the organization.
The Smart Invoice module in SMARKIA
Among the different services oriented to energy management with the standard ISO 50001, SMARKIA has the Smart Billing module, which allows, among other functionalities:
- Simulate consumption scenarios and tariff comparison.
- Calculate the most advantageous power to be contracted according to actual consumption.
- Generate energy pre-bills with key information to analyze energy consumption.
Thanks to this last function, on the 1st of each month the organization will have a pre-invoice of energy consumption and costs for the previous month, which can be compared with the utility bill, generated from the same information obtained from the fiscal metering equipment.
In this way, we can easily detect anomalies and request the commercializing company to check and proceed with the re-invoicing of the affected period or periods.
Examples of energy bill claims
Below, we will present several cases of energy bill claims that have been made based on data from the SMARKIA platform:
CASE 1. Incorrect billing of points with relief supplies.
One of our most important national multi-site clients was paying 100% of the power term in the relief supplies in its energy bill. On this occasion, the company was not refunding 50% of the power term as stated in the Royal Decree 1164/2001 (Article 5). This situation affected more than a dozen supplies for several months, which meant that more than 30,000 € were detected, claimed and re-invoiced by comparing the pre-invoice generated with SMARKIA against the invoice of the supplier.
This same case has occurred in more than 30,000 large energy consumers such as hospitals, shopping malls, cinemas or theaters, among others, which require this backup or supplementary supply.
We tell you more about the case
CASE 2. Rebilling of supply due to erroneous energy invoicing.
In the case of customers with a large number of supplies, invoices are usually grouped by company, which streamlines the billing process for both the customer's accounting department and the supplier. However, this grouped management means that in the event of any incident, it is easier to overlook it.
One of the supplies of a customer with several hundred was being billed in duplicate, both individually and together with the rest of the supplies.
After filing a claim and subsequent verification by the supplier, the amount of the refund exceeded €180,000.
If you are in a similar situation, we can help you!
CASE 3. Rebilling of mispriced consumption.
One of the most important analyses to be performed on billing is the distribution of consumption in the different tariff periods. These periods directly affect the cost of the energy term and the excesses, since the cost of each one is different.
With this monitoring, the customer in case 2 was detected in June an incidence in the billing of the 6.1 A tariff for customers in the Canary Islands and Balearic Islands, receiving energy bills with an energy tariff based on the hourly discrimination of the Peninsula.
By analyzing the pre-invoices of SMARKIA, more than 10,000 € were claimed from the commercialization company, and after verification, the re-invoicing was carried out.
Get to know the PREFACTURAS function of Smarkia
CASE 4. Duplicate supplies.
Finally, we would like to comment on one more case of complaint from another customer of SMARKIA.
This time, the main and standby supplies had the same consumption in kWh in the bills of the supplier. When this was detected, the consumption of both supplies was analyzed, at which time it was verified that in both cases the measurement was being taken from the same meter.
When making the claim, the customer provided the energy invoices in which this incident occurred, allowing the company to re-invoice the total amount.
These are some examples of billing errors that have been claimed and solved through energy monitoring with SMARKIA. And more specifically, through the use of its Smart Billing module, with which, month by month, the consumption and costs that appear in the energy bills issued by the supplier can be verified, detecting possible errors or cost overruns.
