City of Wagga Wagga

Optimising tariff charges for massive savings

The Challenge

The City of Wagga Wagga has a strong focus on the environment, sustainability and resource use accountability, investing significantly into a wide range of energy saving and carbon reduction initiatives.

Understanding that to get the best outcomes, energy management needs to be a whole-of-organisation responsibility – not just that of the sustainability team – Council turned to Azility in 2009 to better track and make use of its energy data. In 2015, the organisation signed on to Azility’s Utility Control module seeking a single, streamlined source of truth for all its utility bills and energy management data… the big picture, down to the finest detail.

The Azility Difference

When you bring energy management data and utility bills together, the savings opportunities are right there in front of you. Utility Control automates utility bill collection from utility providers, catches expensive billing errors, centralises bill approval which ensures ongoing organisation-wide accountability for every utility account, asset and department.

Within the first month Utility Control was in action for Wagga Wagga, Azility was able to identify huge potential savings through optimising tariff charges. A series of checks on Council’s utility bills showed that some sites were paying much higher overall rates than other comparable facilities monitored by Azility. Armed with our support, Council took this information to its provider who confirmed the rates weren’t optimal.

The resulting savings were projected at $90,000 for the following financial year, and the city has since achieved annual energy costs savings in excess of $120,000 – ready to be reinvested into more energy and carbon reduction projects to benefit the local community and the environment.

Key take-aways

Azility Director Dean Jackson says that most organisations evaluate Utility Control against two alternatives – and find them wanting.