The 15-minute interval that sets your bill
Why cutting total usage doesn't lower your bill — and what demand charges actually measure.
Read more →Energy Management
Do you have a strategic understanding of your energy spend? Would you like one?
LCI's ongoing energy management service goes way beyond what an energy broker provides, because energy management is much more than just energy procurement.
Four pillars, one program
What energy management actually covers
Not a single audit. A standing discipline your facility runs on every month.
Bill & tariff analysis, line by line
We pull twelve to twenty-four months of invoices and rebuild them into a single ledger — every rate schedule, every demand ratchet, every tax and rider — so you can see exactly what you're paying for and why. Most facilities we start with have never had someone check whether they're on the right tariff, let alone whether the utility billed it correctly.
We flag misapplied rate classes, stacked demand charges, power factor penalties, and contract terms that no longer match how the plant actually runs. On a typical first pass we find at least one billing error or tariff mismatch worth pursuing with the utility.
Monitoring & benchmarking
Submetering and interval data turn "we used a lot of power last month" into "the compressor room ran unloaded for six hours on the night shift." We set baselines by department, by shift, and by unit of production, so a spike shows up as a number, not a guess.
Benchmarks are compared month over month and against your own historical performance — not a generic industry average that doesn't account for your process. That's what makes the variance actionable instead of academic.
Continuous optimization
Once the data is flowing, we work through a prioritized list: load shifting around demand windows, sequencing equipment to avoid coincident peaks, tuning setpoints, and retiring rebates and incentive programs you're entitled to but not using. Each change gets tracked against the baseline we already set.
This isn't a one-time project that ends when the report is delivered. It's a monthly cadence — new opportunities get found as production changes, rate structures shift, and equipment ages.
Reporting the CFO can act on
You get a monthly summary built for a finance audience: cost per unit produced, variance against budget, savings realized versus baseline, and open items with dollar values attached. No dashboards full of kilowatt-hours with no business meaning behind them.
When energy is a top-five line item, it needs to show up in the same language as the rest of the P&L. That's the standard we hold every report to.
Who this is for
Built for facilities where energy is a top-five cost
This program is sized for large commercial and industrial sites — multi-shift plants, distribution centers, and campuses pulling several megawatts — where the utility bill is big enough that a 10% swing shows up in the annual budget review. If energy is a rounding error on your P&L, a lighter check-in makes more sense.
Plant managers and facility engineers use it to stop firefighting demand spikes after the fact. Finance teams use it because the monthly report finally reconciles with what actually hit the ledger. Either way, it replaces a bill nobody questions with a number everybody understands.
See our energy solutionsHow it runs
From monthly surprise to managed system
Three stages, repeated every billing cycle — not a one-time audit that gathers dust.
Stage 1 — Monitored
We instrument what matters
Submeters and interval data go on the loads that actually drive your bill — not everything, just the equipment and departments that move the number. Bills and tariffs are reconciled against actual usage so there's a clean baseline before anything gets "optimized."
Stage 2 — Benchmarked
We give the numbers context
Usage is measured against your own history, shift-to-shift and month-to-month, and tied to production output where possible. A spike in July no longer looks the same as a spike in January — it's judged against what your facility actually did that month.
Stage 3 — Continuously optimized
We keep working the list
Findings get ranked by dollar impact and worked in order — rate corrections first, then load scheduling, then equipment-level tuning. Every month adds new candidates as production and rates change, so the list never actually empties.
Ongoing — Reported
We close the loop with finance
Savings realized, open items, and cost-per-unit trends land in a monthly report built for a budget meeting, not an engineer's inbox. That's how energy stops being a surprise line item and starts being a managed one.
Why measurement comes first
You can't manage what you've never actually measured
The EPA estimates that industrial and commercial facilities without an active energy management program waste roughly 30% of the energy they pay for — most of it invisible until someone starts measuring it by department and by shift.
That 30% doesn't show up as one big problem. It shows up as a dozen small ones — a compressor that never gets shut off, a tariff nobody rechecked in six years, a demand spike that repeats every Tuesday at 2pm.
Benchmarking is what turns that 30% from an industry statistic into a number specific to your plant — and a punch list your team can actually work through.
Questions we hear often
Bills, tariffs, and reporting
Our utility bill looks fine — why check it anyway?
Most bills look fine because nobody's compared them to the actual tariff schedule and your real usage pattern. We regularly find rate classes that stopped matching how a facility runs years before anyone noticed.
What if we're on the wrong rate schedule?
We document the mismatch and handle the utility filing to correct it going forward, and pursue a refund where the tariff allows for a look-back period — that's a real dollar figure, not a projection.
How is this different from a one-time energy audit?
An audit is a snapshot; this is a subscription. Monitoring and benchmarking continue every month, so savings get tracked as they happen instead of estimated once and never checked again.
Will finance actually be able to use the reporting?
Yes — the monthly report is built around cost per unit, variance to budget, and savings realized, the same metrics finance already tracks elsewhere. No kilowatt-hour dashboards with no business translation.
Further reading
Related insights
About 30% of your energy is probably wasted
What benchmarking a large facility usually reveals — and how to recover it.
Read more →A few peak hours can set your whole year
How capacity costs work in regional power markets — and why on-site generation changes the math.
Read more →Start with the bills. We'll take it from there.
Call (855) 734-4110 and we'll walk through your last few statements together — no commitment, just a clearer picture of what you're actually paying for.