As we transition to a low carbon economy, our experts ensure you can benefit from next-generation energy procurement to reduce risk, control costs and achieve demand reduction targets.
Procurement today is more complex than ever in terms of what you can do and what you need to do. Our experts will help you to procure and manage your energy in smarter ways, bringing renewables and demand reduction to the fore while mitigating risk at every step.
We work in whatever ways make sense for you, recognising you may have already carried out or are running demand reduction activity that must be blended into new and additional efforts. We can work with any existing partners, supply chains and projects, wrapping them into your strategy.
In a complex landscape, we are your independent and objective guide, aligning multiple demands to support your net zero journey and deliver energy security. This includes end-to-end solutions for advanced procurement and risk management.
The Net Zero Pathway tool is a great starting point, providing customised options and indicative costs based on your set-up, preferences and time lines. We can also talk you through the various options and services.
Demand reduction is now standard procedure and well understood. We can help you develop a next-generation procurement strategy aligned with all net zero and demand reduction needs: embedding these requirements in your tendering, procurement and risk management activity.
Previously, demand side response (DSR) activity tended to be straightforward and, in many cases, fairly limited. Net zero changed that, making the need for demand reduction even more acute.
It was once enough to visit a site, report on the opportunities available, and recommend schemes to reduce consumption and costs. We can help you go further, faster – revealing new opportunities and further reducing risk to tackle demand issues from the point where you actually procure your power.
Our procurement team places thousands of contracts each year on behalf of hundreds of clients in all industry sectors. With a proven track record in outperforming the market, we:
- Understand your needs and aspirations as an energy consumer: what energy you want and why.
- Embed demand side analytics in procurement, looking at current and planned activity, and areas and interventions where you can work smarter, including equipment and asset usage at different times, comfort levels required, seasonal variations, etc.
- Go out to the market, tendering and negotiating to meet all your diverse requirements.
- Carefully evaluate the offers received, building them up on a like-for-like basis.
- Deliver the advanced procurement to continue your net zero journey.
Our consulting skills, buying experience and energy reduction expertise mean we can deliver a holistic approach, wrapping the most economical demand side response schemes into a tailored procurement strategy.
Price and Product Analysis
Our market intelligence, procurement and risk teams constantly monitor and track utility markets, prices and products. We have a deep understanding of market trends and direction of travel at all times, in both risks and opportunities. This means we can advise you on the best course of action to meet your specific demands. Our insights are especially useful for organisations that want a fully managed service and do not have specialist buying expertise in-house.
Risk management
Balancing risk with reward: we help energy consumers to make the right decisions at the right time, minimising risks in the planning and procurement of energy while profiting from market opportunities – up to a five, 10 or even 15-year horizon. From designing long-term purchasing and risk strategies to providing light-touch or ad hoc support, our insights and experience means we can confidently take a position and provide you with informed guidance.
Market and Risk Analytics
We track energy and utility markets in real time, analysing Market Trends and Activity to identify opportunities and threats. This analytical insight and risk intelligence underpins effective purchasing and procurement: what to buy and when, and when not to buy, now extending to highly agile in-day trading. Global risk intelligence from multiple sources is sifted and assessed hour-by-hour. This enables you to understand and profit from a changing risk landscape and its cost implications, including Price Risk in fluctuating markets and Legislative Risk covering regulatory requirements and third party costs.
Transparency and trust
We set the benchmark for an open, ethical and transparent approach to tendering and procurement. While many Third Party Intermediaries (TPIs) are trustworthy, bad practices are regularly reported. Consultus is different. A pioneer in utility markets, we have a reputation for openness, honesty, trusted market intelligence and ethical working practices. We are also an award-winning net zero provider: at the Energy Live News awards 2020, Consultus was named the Most Trusted Consultancy (Large) for the second year running.
We have always offered sleeving as part of our flexible energy supply contracts: enabling you to buy energy from different sources in line with your strategy or business needs and then “sleeve” that energy into an existing contract.
This is a great way to start scaling up renewables as part of your net zero-focused advanced procurement and risk strategy. We are experts in this field: every flexible energy supply contract that we have placed in over a decade included the potential for sleeving.
Notable sleeving opportunities arise from onsite generating plant, Power Purchase Agreements (PPA) and Virtual Power Purchase Agreements. We are seeing rising uptake of PPAs and vPPAs as energy users move towards sustainability and renewables, and want to benefit from our ability to sleeve or offset PPA and vPPA energy against an existing supply contract.
Turnkey solution for site generating
We offer a complete strategy and physical solutions for onsite private wire/direct wire power. Our approach combines world-class design and installation of prime generation assets with unique trading and energy optimisation services. If you generate more energy than you need, it can be sold back to the market and exported via your standard network connection.
Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs)
These are long-term agreements between an energy consumer who wants to buy 100% renewable energy and the power producer. Providing renewable energy with no third party charges, generating assets are physically installed and commissioned behind the metering point of the energy consumer. The greatest benefits come via onsite PPA arrangements – “corporate PPA”.
Virtual Power Purchase Agreements
This flexible and increasingly popular option has even simpler contractual arrangements than a physical PPA. In virtual or “synthetic” PPAs, electricity is not supplied direct from green generating plant to a consumer. Instead, the power produced is traded on the wholesale energy market.
Our experts will help you profit from imbalance opportunities in energy supply and demand.
With the storage of energy still difficult and cost-prohibitive, the market aims to balance supply with consumer demand. This can be a tricky balancing act, with the majority of balancing tools and mechanisms designed to keep the lights on when and if generation and supply is intermittent, such as from onshore turbines when the wind drops.
On the other hand, there is little point for the same turbines to be running full tilt in the early hours of the morning when demand is non-existent. During the coronavirus pandemic, suppressed demand led to periods of negative energy costs: the market effectively settled a spot price on the basis that it “pays you” not to use energy.
As this is a trading market, lucrative opportunities are available if you are working with Consultus on demand response and modulating your energy usage: the more flexible you can be, the more profitable the opportunity.
We can enable in-day trades and activities such as:
- Putting energy you can create using onsite generating equipment onto the grid if market demand is high, supply is struggling and the price is right – it could be 10 times the usual market price. In effect, your site can become a profitable tradeable entity on the energy marketplace while you supply the grid with any excess energy or perhaps even temporarily curtail your own energy usage to instead sell as much of your energy as possible.
- Drawing as much energy as possible from the grid if the spot price drops low enough: if you are a manufacturer and the market price for energy is heading into negative territory, roster more staff, ramp up every production line and triple shifts as you such as much cheap (and increasingly renewable) energy from the grid as possible.
