Energy MonitoringUtility Bill Verification
Check the electricity bill against your own meter record
Where a site holds no metering of its own, the only record of what was consumed belongs to the party issuing the invoice. Independent sub-metering at your incomer gives you a second record, and verification is the period-by-period comparison between the two.
Four checks
Every line on a commercial electricity bill reduces to one of four questions. Each is a comparison between two records that ought to agree, and each has a characteristic way of going wrong.
01
Reading reconciliation
What is compared: Billed kWh and kVAh against your own metered consumption for the same period, month by month across the review window.
How it typically fails: Estimated readings carried forward, transposed digits, or an accumulation error that never self-corrects because every subsequent bill is calculated from the wrong opening figure.
02
Tariff classification
What is compared: The tariff category on the account against your actual supply voltage, measured load profile and the terms of your supply agreement.
How it typically fails: Being billed as a lower-voltage customer when the connection qualifies for a higher-voltage band at a lower unit rate. The error is structural: it applies to every bill until the classification on the account is corrected.
03
Demand charge
What is compared: The maximum demand figure the charge was calculated from against the measured demand profile, event by event.
How it typically fails: A single spike — often a fault, a start-up, or a load that should never have coincided — setting the peak for the whole month. Because the charge is derived from the highest short-interval reading, one abnormal minute can be paid for repeatedly.
04
Reactive and power factor charges
What is compared: Any reactive energy or power factor penalty on the bill against measured power factor at the incomer over the same period.
How it typically fails: A penalty or reactive-energy line item applied, where the account carries one, on a period when the measured power factor did not warrant it — or a correction system that has failed without anybody noticing it on the invoice.
Client result
UGX 40M
Billing variance recovered — Quality Chemicals (QCIL), pharmaceutical manufacturer
Independent meter records reconciled against 12 months of utility invoices found a variance in the applied tariff structure and the recorded units. UGX 40M was recovered through a formal submission to the utility.
Read full case studyWhat goes to the utility
The pack is built so a utility billing officer can verify every figure in it independently, against records the utility already holds. That is what a formal recovery claim has to stand on.
Period-by-period reconciliation
Billed figures beside measured figures for each billing period, with the variance and its dated source.
Independent measurement record
Interval data from the sub-meters, with meter serial numbers, installation dates and the point each meter was reading.
Written findings and quantified claim
Each discrepancy stated separately with its financial effect and the tariff clause or agreement term it engages, structured to support a formal credit or refund request.
What we need from you
Gather these before the first meeting and the review starts a fortnight earlier.
- Utility invoices covering the review period — 24 to 36 months where available.
- Meter numbers and account numbers for every supply point on the account.
- The supply agreement or connection agreement, including the contracted capacity.
- Any meter reading records, replacement notices or billing correspondence already held.
- Access for independent sub-metering at the incomer, where none is installed yet.
If you have no independent metering
Historical bills can be checked for internal consistency, tariff classification and demand anomalies straight away. Proving a consumption discrepancy, however, requires a second record — so metering is installed at the incomer first and the reconciliation runs forward from there. We will say which of the two you are buying before you commit to it.
How the metering worksPart of the monitoring service
This is one of the things Orijtech reads out of your monitoring data. It is not a separate installation and it needs no separate hardware.
Find out whether your bills are accurate
Send the last 24 months of invoices and your supply agreement. We will tell you whether there is a case worth pursuing before proposing any work.
Start a bill review