Australian owned leading business energy retailer, Blue NRG, is calling on more small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to undertake network tariff analysis to identify the optimum network tariff for their businesses and potentially eliminate higher energy costs.
Blue NRG’s cost-saving approach for SMEs involves a comprehensive Network Tariff Analysis (NTA) for both current and newly onboarded clients. Network charges are the fees associated with using an electricity network’s infrastructure, it constitutes the largest portion of retail rates.
NTAs are traditionally performed only upon a customer’s request to help them identify the most cost-effective tariff according to their business’ needs and consumption. By implementing a proactive approach and offering a review upfront, Blue NRG is raising awareness of the benefits of the process and advocating for SMEs to offset rising energy rates and business costs.
To conduct an NTA, Blue NRG uses its insights platform called Insights by Blue NRG to provide a report on a SMEs current energy consumption and tariff structure for analysis. This data is collected from a businesses’ smart meter. The report outlines 12 months’ worth of electricity usage data including maximum time of use, actual use during peak and off-peak times, retail rates, and current network tariff structure. An NTA can only be performed on businesses with a smart meter system.
With this data, Insights by Blue NRG generates a report to compare the SMEs current tariff structure with other available structures and identify any potential areas of savings with a more cost-effective tariff structure.
Undertaking a NTA and identifying areas of potential savings has enabled many Blue NRG customers to increase savings, including Endeavour Group, an Australian owned independent petroleum distributor.
After signing up with Blue NRG and switching to a more cost-effective tariff structure, Endeavour Group found more than $35,000 worth of savings across 38 of its business sites. Managing Director of the Endeavour Group, Jeff Griffiths, believes Blue NRG’s proactive approach to NTAs helped identify high-cost areas where savings could be made.
“We thought we were already on a pretty good deal with our previous energy retailer, but Blue NRG was able to give us even better rates,” said Griffiths.
According to General Manager Duncan Jacklin, many customers are missing out on savings and paying unreasonably high network tariffs. This ultimately leads to a lack of trust between the customer and their energy retailer.
“Our role as an energy retailer is to advocate for our customers and to go above and beyond by offering tariff optimisation. This ensures our customers are reaping the benefits of being on the correct network tariff,” Jacklin said.
He added, “By taking a proactive and personalised approach to network tariff optimisation, we can potentially offer greater savings and maintain competitive in the market.”