The pooling of electricity purchases

When electricity consumers group together to renew their individual electricity supply contracts, they have in principle the possibility to pool the tendering process, the electricity supply, or both simultaneously.

Zelya organises the pooling of electricity purchases for businesses groups

Management of readings | Aggregation of consumptions

Profile analysis | Coverage strategies | Pre-negotiations & Selection of suppliers 

Analysis of specifications | Competitive tendering 

Analysis and discussion of offers | Assistance in negotiations and in the signing of multi-site contracts 

The pooling of the tender and competitive tendering process enables the sharing of costs associated with competitive tendering and increases the power to renegotiate existing contracts, as long as the same supplier is solicited to satisfy several or all individual contracts. The pooling of the procedure is therefore an aggregation of consumption and a request for aggregated quotation enabling an applicable price to be obtained for all individual contracts. This pooling is particularly interesting when faced with suppliers that do not supply below a minimum annual quantity: such suppliers would not respond to small consumers who request a quotation only for their own consumption.

Pooling of supply

The pooling of the supply, which can be sought and realised whether the procedure is also pooled or not, consists in substituting individual supply contracts with a few common supply contracts, i.e. signed by the same legal entity. The pooling of the supply is therefore a purchase aggregation.

In the most accomplished case, the members of the groups create a purchasing centre that signs the global supply contract: such an entity takes the place of the various individual contracts.

Which pooling to choose?

Pooling of the procedure and pooling of the supply are thus two distinct, but complementary, notions. In some cases, consumers create a common structure that requests a single quotation (= procedure pooling), to which they transfer all their contracts (= supply pooling). In such a case, this structure performs the functions of a purchasing centre.

In both cases of pooling, nothing prevents partially aggregating individual consumers: consumption sites can be grouped (or aggregated) into subsets, as long as they have similar or opposite characteristics. Their characteristics thus reinforce, through aggregation, the scale effect in the first case, or the smoothing effect in the second.

Synergies, which result in savings on the overall or individual bill, do not result intrinsically from pooling, but actually from the way individual contracts are aggregated (what are the subsets ?). It may even be that by aggregating all the contracts (therefore no subset), we deprive ourselves of certain synergies.

Our services

Within the scope of pooling your electricity purchases, Zelya Energy assists you to:

• finalize a database on the different consumption sites of your group ;
• analyse your sites' consumption profiles from invoices and readings ;
• advise on the level of pooling and grouping of consumption sites ;
• develop one or more specifications ;
• launch and supervise the tender process with potential suppliers ;
• analyze the offers and quotes submitted ;
• secure your negotiations.