Case Study

Addenbrookes Hospital recovers £25,000 overcharge by auditing billing data.

Using Stark Software's Internet-based energy reporting service, Addenbrookes Hospital Energy Manager, Andy Sanders, implemented a bill verification strategy that included checks on the consumption data Public Electricity Suppliers use for billing, saving the Trust £25,000 in a single month.

Addenbrookes NHS Trust, Cambridge University Clinical School and its research partners occupy a 66-acre site on the outskirts of Cambridge, with a total of twenty large buildings. The site has a single electricity supply with ABB PPM (Code of Practice 5) metering installed.

Reconciling Supplier Invoices

Since the introduction of the competitive market for electricity supply Addenbrookes has successfully embraced the contract market, making significant cost savings. However, Andy Sanders, Addenbrookes Energy Manager, was concerned that with the introduction of Code 5 metering for contract supplies there was no way of reconciling supplier invoices against in-house meter readings. Furthermore, there was no clear indication when estimates had been used by the Settlements Data Collection Agent (DCA) to 'fill-in' gaps in the data either on the bill itself or on half hourly data disks provided by suppliers.

In order to implement an on-going bill verification programme that included checks on the billing data Andy decided to subscribe to SavenergyOnline, an Internet-based reporting service from Stark Software International Ltd that dials up electricity meters daily to retrieve consumption data in half hourly intervals directly from the meter. Data is downloaded or analysed against a range of classic M&T reports via the Stark web site (stark.co.uk). Every month a report is run that allows Andy to re-calculate invoices using the raw consumption data and reconciles it against the bill.

Benefits

The benefits of the service were illustrated very effectively in November last year. An invoice of £50,000 was received which was higher than expected, although complicated by the fact that Addenbrookes' 4MW CHP plant was turned off for a four-week period and at the same time additional load was coming online from new buildings on the site.

A SavenergyOnline report for the month (Figure: 1) indicated that the consumption should have resulted in a bill of £25,000. When the bill was queried with the Supplier they initially argued that they were required to use the billing data that was supplied by their Settlements Data Collection Agent (DCA). The Meter Operator maintained the meters were working correctly and also referred the issue to the Settlements DCA. After much investigation the problem was identified as an administrative error at the DCA, which had led to recording incorrect consumption figures. These consumption figures had been passed on to the supplier as the confirmed billing data.

Use of SavenergyOnline to provide a reconciliation check on the Settlements data enabled Andy to identify the overcharge and provide evidence of the error, ensuring the hospital was not invoiced for the £25,000 worth of electricity they had not consumed.