What if your facility’s electricity bill is being calculated on just five hours a year?

For Class A electricity consumers in Ontario, that’s exactly what’s happening. Your peak demand factor, the single biggest driver of Global Adjustment charges, gets set during the province’s five peak-demand hours annually. One spike at the wrong moment, and you’re paying more every month for the next twelve months.

Here’s how one event centre wrestled back control.

The Problem Nobody Talks About: Ontario’s Global Adjustment

Most companies know about commodity costs. Demand charges? Less familiar. But for large facilities in Ontario, there’s a cost that dwarfs both: the Global Adjustment.

Quick version: Ontario’s power grid faces periods of extreme demand. The province spreads the cost of managing that demand across all Class A customers in proportion to how much they used power during those peak moments. For a Class A consumer, that charge isn’t calculated on your total usage: it’s calculated on your peak demand factor, a facility-specific multiplier.

Here’s the chain:

  • Ontario’s system operator identifies the five highest-demand hours of the year.
  • Your facility’s power use during those hours gets measured.
  • That measurement becomes your peak demand factor for the next year.
  • Every month, the province-wide Global Adjustment is multiplied by your factor.
  • Same facility, same events, but if your factor is high, every single monthly bill gets hit harder.

The volatility isn’t theoretical. It’s your next invoice.

For event centres, arenas, and sporting facilities, this is a genuinely difficult exposure. Demand is spiky by nature: a sold-out event, tournament weekend, ice loads, HVAC cooling—all of it pushes consumption up. And when those spikes land during provincial peak hours, the facility’s peak demand factor climbs with it.

Most facilities don’t even know it’s happening until the bill arrives.

The Strategic Difference: Managed vs. Unmanaged

One managed its peaks. The other didn’t.

An unmanaged Class A facility treats each month’s bill independently, reacting to consumption after the fact. A managed facility recognizes a brutal truth: the peak demand factor is the variable that shapes your entire year of charges. Instead of looking at monthly consumption, it asks: “When are the province’s peak hours most likely to occur, and what can we do about it?”

That’s not a rhetorical question.

What We Did

Our team took end-to-end ownership of this customer’s Class A Global Adjustment exposure. Instead of managing month-to-month, we focused on the one variable that matters: the peak demand factor itself.

Peak forecasting and coincident-peak avoidance. We monitored provincial demand conditions and identified which hours were most likely to become annual system peaks—giving the facility clear, well-timed guidance on when it mattered most to reduce load. That guidance was specific: not vague warnings, but targeted advice tied to actual market conditions.

Operational curtailment that respected the business. This wasn’t about shutting off the lights. Load reduction happened around the facility’s event calendar and comfort requirements. The guest experience and the ability to host events never got compromised. Managed peak avoidance still has to work operationally.

Verification and settlement. We tracked performance against the actual peak hours as they settled, confirming that the operational effort translated into a measurably lower peak demand factor for the adjustment period. Numbers matter. Strategy without verification is just planning.

The Result: 41.5% Lower Peak Demand Factor, Locked In for a Year

We reduced this customer’s peak demand factor from 0.00007288 to 0.00004263.

That’s a 41.5% reduction in the multiplier that determines every Class A Global Adjustment charge.

Because the peak demand factor is set for the year, this isn’t a one-month win. The new factor runs from July 2026 through June 2027, which means every monthly Class A Global Adjustment charge across those twelve months will be roughly 41.5% lower than it would have been under the prior factor.

Same facility. Same events. Same operational needs.

Materially lower bills every month.

Why This Matters: The Compounding Cost of Not Managing Peaks

Ontario’s Global Adjustment is one of the most consequential, and least understood, costs a large facility carries.

Because exposure is set by performance during just a handful of hours each year, the difference between a managed strategy and an unmanaged one compounds across all twelve months that follow. Miss one peak by not knowing it’s coming, and you’re paying for it 12 times over.

This result shows what a disciplined, well-timed approach to peak management can deliver: not a rate you hope for, but a lower cost structure secured for the year ahead.

For facilities with large, variable loads: event centres, arenas, sporting venues; it’s one of the highest-leverage moves available on the energy bill. The effort that prevents one peak hour usually costs far less than the savings it unlocks across the full year.

Where You Stand

Is your facility’s peak demand factor costing you more than it needs to?

If you operate a large facility in Ontario with variable loads; whether it’s an event centre, arena, data centre, or manufacturing operation: you may have the same exposure. Most organizations don’t know their current peak demand factor or what it’s costing them annually.

The buyers who stay calm in summer are the ones who made a plan in June. That’s the whole game: getting ahead of the risk instead of reacting to the bill.

If you’re not sure where you stand on Class A Global Adjustment, that’s worth a conversation. We look for free and can help you understand what your current exposure looks like—and what a managed strategy might mean for your facility.

Reach out to see what we find.