Do You Know How Capacity & Transmission Values Affect Your End-Use Customer?

Electric supply charges consist mainly of five components: energy, capacity, transmission, ancillaries, and losses. A customer’s cap tag, or Peak Load Contribution (PLC), is often the second most impactful component of a customer’s electric supply rate after the cost of energy.  Transmission tags are normally the third most impactful! 

Do you know your customers Capacity and Transmission values during the RFQ process? 

With the right tools and information, energy brokers can help customers lower their energy costs. This can be done through market expertise and strategic advice. Brokers that understand a customer’s cap and trans tags, and how the customer uses energy is important to ensure the right electricity product is used, such as a full fixed, partial fixed with pass through, or index. Brokers may also assist the customer in other ways to reduce their capacity and transmission costs through programs such as Demand Response. 

This is where Sparkplug, the leading (by far) Energy Brokerage Software can help.  Sparkplug allows you to get Historical Usage, Capacity, Transmission and other valuable information through Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and other functionality in over 30 utilities across the US. In conjunction, Sparkplug allows you to store unlimited # of historical yearly values of PLC and NSLP information for each and every customer meter, so you can help the customer understands how their usage and costs have changed overtime. 

Frequently Asked Questions:

• Q: What exactly is a Capacity Value Tag?
  • A: It is the measure of a customer’s electricity usage during the ISO’s peak hours when demand on the grid is at its peak. Understanding the overall grid’s demand at peak times is necessary to ensure there is enough generation capacity to serve all customers. The cap tag value is calculated and assigned to each customer for the following year, starting in June, and can have significant impact to energy pricing to determine the customer’s capacity fees during the year. For each kWh charged, there are corresponding capacity costs which are based on the cap tag. 
• Q: What is a Transmission Value Tag? 
  • A: Transmission tags, also known as Network Service Peak Load (NSPL), is calculated very similarly to cap tags. They relate to the transmission costs associated with movement of electricity over long distances through interconnected lines that form the grid. Usually measured by the calendar year (Jan 1-Dec 31).  To ensure grid reliability, the costs to support delivery are shared across all customers, and a customer’s portion is based on their demand during annual peak hours. As a customer, the dollar value per megawatt day is multiplied by their trans tag for each day of service.