What was happening before Pilot

Several patterns were absorbing time and leaking value across the portfolio:

• 250+ separate utility accounts, each with its own invoice cycle, supplier, and contract terms. AP processing alone was eating tens of hours per month of property management team time.
• Ad-hoc procurement decisions — contracts renewed reactively when notices arrived, with whichever supplier offered the most convenient rate. No aggregated buying power; no portfolio strategy.
• Capacity tag exposure managed nowhere — substantial in PJM, where HVAC-driven summer afternoon load sets each site's 5CP tag and drives the next year's capacity charges. No one was forecasting peak hours or coordinating reductions across the portfolio.
• Billing errors and tariff misclassifications going unnoticed — at 250+ accounts, the volume of routine errors that slip past casual review compounds into real money.
• Gas procurement on default tariffs across most properties — substantial markup over competitive supply on the heating and water heating load.
• No consolidated reporting — executives and asset management couldn't get a clean portfolio-level view of utility spend, savings trajectory, or sustainability progress without manual data assembly.

None of this was poor execution. It was the predictable outcome of trying to run a function with neither the bandwidth nor the specialized knowledge it required.

What Pilot did

Engagement model: Turnkey Energy Management. Pilot operates the utility function end-to-end; the client retains policy authority and approval rights but doesn't run the function. Four coordinated workstreams.

1. Consolidated procurement — power and gas

• Aggregated power procurement across all sites by PJM zone, leveraging total portfolio load (rather than 250+ individual small accounts) to negotiate stronger pricing and terms with suppliers
• Layered hedging with documented trigger prices, replacing the prior pattern of timing-dependent renewals
• Competitive gas procurement across deregulated gas markets, moving sites off default utility tariffs onto market-rate supply with locked or layered pricing — typically recovering 5–10% on gas alone
• Multi-supplier portfolio structuring to match each PJM zone with the supplier offering the best rates and contract terms for that geography

2. Utility Bill Pay

• Centralized invoice processing for all 250+ utility and supplier accounts — Pilot receives invoices, audits each one, processes payment within required timeframes
• Single consolidated monthly statement to the client — one invoice in place of 250+ separate ones
• AP time relief for the internal team — substantial bandwidth recovery, typically 20–40 hours per month previously spent on routine utility AP work
• Payment timing optimization — leveraging payment cycles for working capital benefit where applicable

3. Invoice audit and tariff analysis at scale

• Every bill audited for accuracy on tariff classification, demand calculations, capacity charges, taxes, and fees
• Tariff misclassifications corrected — moving accounts onto the rate class that genuinely fits their usage pattern, which is often not what the prior owner or property manager defaulted to
• Refunds and credits pursued where billing errors had accumulated over time
• Tariff change monitoring — utility tariff filings tracked so any portfolio implication is caught at the regulatory stage, not after the bill arrives

4. PJM capacity tag management

• Portfolio-level 5CP forecasting — using weather monitoring and PJM load forecasting to predict the 5 highest summer afternoon system peaks
• Coordinated operational response at sites with HVAC and lighting controls flexible enough to reduce load during peak windows
• Demand response enrollment where operationally feasible, generating revenue and further reducing capacity charges
• Tag tracking by site with year-over-year reduction targets built into operational planning

What changed

• ~$1M annual savings — approximately 15% reduction on baseline utility spend
• 250+ utility accounts consolidated into one billing relationship — single statement, audited line items, no missed payments
• Capacity tag managed at portfolio level for the first time, with year-over-year reductions across sites with operational flexibility
• Property management team bandwidth recovered — utility administration no longer competing with leases, tenant work, and operations
• Consolidated reporting for executive and investor stakeholders — portfolio spend trajectory, savings attribution, sustainability progress all in one dashboard
• Gas procurement modernized from default tariffs to competitive supply across the portfolio

Why this case worked

The match between client need and engagement model is what made this a strong fit. Four factors stood out:

• Pilot scope matched client appetite. The primary need was outsourcing the function entirely. Turnkey engagement fits a client that wants utility off their plate — not a client looking for advisory support to a team running the function internally. Trying to force a co-managed model on this client would have wasted everyone's time.
• Aggregation created leverage despite individual site smallness. $26K per site is too small for site-by-site optimization. $6.5M aggregated buys real supplier attention, justifies portfolio-level capacity tag management, and supports the analytics infrastructure that makes audit at scale economic.
• Single-ISO focus enabled depth. 250+ sites all within PJM let Pilot apply deep PJM-specific knowledge — zone-by-zone supplier relationships, 5CP capacity dynamics, transmission cost variations between PSEG and DOM and PEPCO — without spreading attention across other markets.
• Administrative relief was real value. The savings number captures the dollars. It doesn't capture the 20–40 hours per month of property management team time that came back. For a stretched internal team, that recovered bandwidth is just as material as the financial savings.

This case study describes a real Pilot client engagement. Identifying details have been anonymized; financial figures are approximate.