Excel Consulting Services in Apple Valley, CA

Most often it is building a model that carries the actual tiered rate structure — every threshold and rate — instead of an average cost per unit.

After that it is comparing efficiency measures through that structure, testing whether shifting usage between periods helps, and catching excursions from the meter history.

Because it has the wrong shape. In a tiered structure the next unit costs more than the last, so the relationship between usage and cost curves upward rather than running straight.

An average flattens that curve, which means it understates the cost of a heavy month and overstates the cost of a light one, consistently and in a predictable direction.

Considerably. A reduction that comes out of a top tier is worth far more per unit than the same reduction at the base, so two measures with identical physical effects can have very different financial ones.

Compared at an average rate, the measures that cut peak usage are systematically undervalued, which means the best ones are the most likely to be turned down.

Possibly quite a lot. Where the timing of consumption is partly controllable, spreading the same total more evenly puts less of it into the upper tiers and reduces the bill without reducing usage.

The size of that effect is calculable from the structure and the meter history, and since it costs nothing but scheduling it is usually the first thing worth testing.

Usually well enough to be useful, because the two have distinct seasonal signatures and respond to different conditions.

Where sub-metering exists it is straightforward. Where it does not, an estimate from the annual pattern is far better than treating the whole bill as one undifferentiated summer problem.

Probably, and that is one of the clearer returns available. A leak or a failing unit shows up as consumption departing from its own history for the same month in prior years.

In a tiered structure that excess is doubly expensive because it lands in the upper bands, which is why catching it in weeks rather than at a bill is worth the small amount of structure involved.

Scope decides it, which is why the statements get read before a figure is named and why that reading is free. A tiered model is small and fixed-price; a full load analysis is priced as one job.

Either way the deliverable and its price are both written down before anything is built.

No. Everything is done over a shared screen, which works identically at any distance and means a bill needing explanation this week is looked at this week.

It also keeps travel off the invoice, which on a short engagement is a real share of the total.

No, and the two complement each other rather than overlapping. An auditor or an engineer will tell you what can physically be changed and by how much.

Our part is making sure the financial case for each option is calculated against the real rate structure rather than an average, which is where those cases are most often got wrong.

A tiered model with variance decomposition is often a few days. Adding load separation, scenario testing and excursion monitoring usually runs one to two weeks.

However large the job, the figure goes on paper before construction rather than surfacing partway through.

The workbooks, any code behind them, a written account of how the tiers and thresholds are held, and time with whoever will maintain it.

Nothing depends on us afterward and no recurring charge keeps it alive. Further help is available on request and never a condition.

No. They describe where enquiries have tended to come from rather than any rule, and what settles it is the shape of the problem.

A tiered rate model, a load separation, an excursion monitor and a clinic rota are considerably more alike underneath than they look.