Energy Cost per Unit Tracker Spreadsheet
What one unit actually costs you in electricity, and how much of the bill was drawn while nothing at all was being made.
An energy bill tells you what you spent. It does not tell you what a thing costs to make, which of your machines drew power into an empty building, or why the same product cost more in March than it did in October. A week is 168 hours long, the site draws power for all of them, and the meter does not know the difference.
What is in it
- Cost per unit taken from the whole bill: the electricity, the standing charges and the capacity charges together
- One row a week for what you made and the hours you were making it, then one row per meter, per rate band
- By Meter: where the power went, and how much of each meter’s year was drawn into an empty building
- By Rate Band: what the clock costs you, and what moving a tenth of the peak hours would be worth
- Running Nothing: the hours you were not making anything, priced from a single figure you read once per meter
- Nine linked tabs, ending with the whole year on one screen
Who it is for
Anywhere with a bill, a meter and something you count: a bakery, a laundry, a cold store, a print works, a farm, a leisure centre, a workshop. A single site meter and a flat tariff is enough — every tab still answers every question.
The worked example
The worked year inside the file cost $962,266 — $931,170 of electricity and $31,096 of standing and capacity charges — against 3,768,850 units made. That is $0.2553 a unit.
For 5,176 hours of that year, 59.3% of the period, nothing at all was being made, and the site still drew $202,602 of electricity: 21.1% of the whole bill. The same unit cost $0.2307 in a busy week and $0.3032 in a quiet one, on the same machines and the same tariff.
How it works
Compatible with Microsoft Excel 2016 or newer on Windows or Mac, Google Sheets, and LibreOffice. No macros, no add-ons, no account to create, nothing to install.
The download has two workbooks: one with the example above already filled in, so you can see what every column expects, and the same file completely blank for your own figures. A plain-English guide comes as a PDF. Buy it on Etsy — $9
Sold through my Etsy shop, ThePlainLedger, so the download, the payment and the buyer protection are all handled by Etsy.
A look inside the file
Questions people actually ask
How do I work out the energy cost of one unit I make?
Divide the whole bill — the electricity plus the standing and capacity charges — by the units you made, and then separate out the power drawn while nothing was being made. In the worked year that was $962,266 over 3,768,850 units, $0.2553 each, and $202,602 of it (21.1% of the bill) was drawn in the 5,176 hours nothing was being produced. The same unit cost $0.2307 in a busy week and $0.3032 in a quiet one, because only the denominator changed.
Is this only for factories, and can I use it for gas or water?
No — it works anywhere with a bill, a meter and something you count: a bakery, a laundry, a cold store, a print works, a farm, a leisure centre, a workshop. If you count covers, jobs, rooms or tonnes rather than units, type your own word in Setup and the file uses it everywhere. Gas and water go in as meters with their own price; keep one file per utility if the units differ.
We don't know what the plant draws when it is off, and we only have one meter.
Read the meters once with everything shut down — it takes twenty minutes and it is the single figure that lets the file separate the electricity that made something from the electricity that did not. One meter and a flat tariff is fine: that is one reading row a week and one rate band, and every other tab answers every question. Sub-metering makes it sharper; it is not a condition of using the file. Everything else is three things a week: the week, how many you made, and how many hours you were actually making them.
Will it open in Google Sheets or LibreOffice, and are there macros?
Yes — the file is built as .xlsx, so it opens in Excel 2016 or newer on Windows or Mac, goes into Google Sheets through File → Import → Upload, and works in LibreOffice. No macros, no add-ons, no account to create, nothing to install and no subscription. You download a file and it is yours. You get two workbooks — one with the worked year filled in, one blank with the same nine tabs and formulas — plus a plain-English PDF guide.
Is this a monitoring system — does it connect to our smart meter?
No — nothing is wired in and nothing is installed; it is not a monitoring system, a smart meter or a building-management platform, and nothing syncs or logs in. You type readings straight off the bill or the sub-meters, and the file does not know your supply contract. It will not switch the dryers off for you — it tells you what leaving them on costs, per year and per unit you sell.
Need it built around your business?
This file assumes one metered site, a rate-band tariff and something countable coming off the end of it. If yours is different — gas and water sitting alongside electricity, several sites on one supply contract, a half-hourly consumption file from the supplier, or a solar array feeding back into the meter — I can build the same logic around how you actually work.
All other templates are listed on the Excel & Google Sheets Templates page.