The pooling of electricity purchases

When electricity consumers join forces to renew their individual supply contracts, they may choose to pool the tendering process, the electricity supply itself, or both simultaneously.

Zelya organises pooled electricity purchasing for business groups

Metering management | Aggregation of consumption

Profile analysis | Hedging strategies | Pre-negotiation & supplier shortlisting

Specification drafting | Competitive tendering

Offer analysis & review | Support with negotiations and the signing of multi-site contracts

Pooling the tendering process enables participants to share the costs of competitive procurement while increasing their collective bargaining power. This is particularly effective when a single supplier is asked to cover multiple individual contracts. In practice, pooling combines consumption and requests a consolidated quotation, thereby securing a common tariff applicable to all contracts. Such pooling is especially valuable when dealing with suppliers that impose minimum annual volume thresholds and would otherwise ignore smaller consumers seeking quotations for their own usage alone.

Pooling of supply

Pooling of supply—whether or not combined with a pooled procedure—means replacing individual supply contracts with one or several shared contracts signed by a common legal entity. This represents an aggregation of purchasing volumes.

In its most advanced form, members establish a purchasing centre that signs a single global supply contract, thereby consolidating all individual agreements under one umbrella.

Which pooling option to choose?

Pooling the procedure and pooling the supply are distinct but complementary. In some cases, consumers create a joint structure to issue a single request for quotation (= procedural pooling), and subsequently transfer all their supply contracts to that entity (= supply pooling). In this setup, the structure acts as a purchasing centre.

Partial aggregation is also possible. Consumption sites may be grouped into subsets with similar or contrasting profiles. This creates synergies: in some cases amplifying the scale effect, in others smoothing demand variations.

Ultimately, synergies—and thus savings—depend not solely on pooling itself, but on how individual contracts are aggregated. In some cases, aggregating all contracts together may actually eliminate potential synergies that could have been captured through targeted sub-grouping.

Our services

As part of your pooled electricity procurement, Zelya Energy assists you in:

• building a comprehensive database of all consumption sites within your group;
• analysing consumption profiles from invoices and meter data;
• advising on the optimal level of pooling and grouping of sites;
• drafting one or more specifications;
• launching and managing the tender process with potential suppliers;
• analysing and comparing offers;
• securing your negotiations to achieve optimal contractual terms.