Insights That Change the Game

Overview
Trellis helps the City of Mitcham conduct a trial that has the potential to cut their electricity costs. Paul Hill is the Manager of Sustainability and Procurement at the City of Mitcham, a local government organisation in South Australia. Paul oversees the City’s utilities usage and manages the contracts for everything from energy to waste. Trellis is enabling the City to trial a new contract structure, which has the potential to deliver electricity cost savings across the organisation’s hundreds of buildings.

The Challenge: Assessing the viability of time of use tariffs
The City of Mitcham currently has a fixed rate contract for the majority of its buildings. However, Paul believes that time of use tariffs could be more cost-effective for the City and sees them as the future of energy consumption. Time of use tariffs are prices that vary based on demand, with lower prices during off-peak hours and higher prices during peak times.

Paul faced two barriers to trialling the transition to time of use tariffs. First, he needed a tool that could provide a highly detailed consumption analysis for every council building. Secondly, he needed to translate his findings to decision makers who didn’t have the subject matter expertise to decipher the data.

The Solution: Interval data insights
When it came to assessing the viability of time of use tariffs, Trellis’s interval data module proved the perfect solution. This module allowed Paul and his team to set up a consumption profile for each facility or building, enabling them to forecast the cost of transitioning to a time of use tariff and compare it to the current fixed rate contract.

“Trellis has enabled us to conduct a level of assessment and analysis that hasn’t been done at this council before,” Paul says.

The Outcome: Clear and powerful findings

While the trial is still in progress, Trellis’s insights have provided promising results. Initial estimates suggest that contracted retail time of use rates could reduce the City of Mitcham’s electricity expenses and provide a cost benefit to the organisation.

Trellis’ easy-to-understand reporting has also been extremely useful for getting buy-in from other decision makers at the City of Mitcham. It has helped Paul and his team communicate the benefits and highlight the potential for cost savings.

“Interval data is an emerging space in energy management,” explains Paul. “Working with Trellis is helping us stay ahead of the curve.”

Future Impact: Streamlined Contract Management
Paul is looking forward to tapping into more of Trellis’ capabilities, particularly its contract pricing management capabilities. Trellis will soon automate the council’s vetting of invoices in accordance with their contracts, helping them streamline their contract management process. This will save time and resources that would otherwise be spent manually reviewing invoices.

Overall, Paul has found Trellis to be a valuable tool for managing the City of Mitcham’s utilities and emissions tracking. He estimates that using Trellis has helped them achieve efficiency equivalent to having a full-time resource dedicated to utilities management, while producing far deeper and more accurate insights than a single person could provide.

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