Multifamily Utilities - Residential or Commercial

[John Douglas]

Question for those with multifamily properties: My energy provider (Duke Energy) has always classified the "Master" accounts for my quads as residential meters. The Master account being the one that controls the hallway and basement lights, laundry machines, boiler, etc. The newest property I purchased has the Master account listed as Commercial instead of residential, and the delivery charges are triple what they are on the residential accounts. I called Duke to inquire and they told me that all my other accounts should be Commercial also and they were classified wrong. They didn't say if they were going to reclassify them or not, but if they do it will sting for sure.

I have a friend who is an alternative energy provider and he swears that Duke should be classifying them all as residential and that I should "have my attorney file a grievance with the attorney general b/c Duke is miscategorizing my properties." Does anyone have any experience with this? I can't find anything online that lays out when a property should be considered residential v. commercial. I think calling my quads commercial accounts is wrong, personally. The master account at my properties uses less energy than my home account b/c these are small buildings. Also, what extra am I receiving for this Commercial account aside from a 3x higher bill? There is nothing additional being provided in terms of connectivity, disaster recovery, service, etc. for the commercial account. Duke just figures "hey, it's a business, let's charge them triple because we are a monopoly and we can." And we just have to take it.