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Business electricity quote with no usage history

Opening a location with no bills yet? Build a useful usage estimate and learn what a supplier needs to prepare a quote.

By Voltcheckr Research · Published Sep 17, 2026 · Updated Oct 10, 2026 · 7 min read

What changed: Revised the opening and search description to clarify the question this guide answers.

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A business offer is priced on the account's expected usage. An open account shows it on past bills. A new location has none, so a projected usage figure takes their place, next to the facts that identify the meter and the business.

Eligibility follows the service address and its utility. In the ERCOT region, an address can shop a supplier unless a city-owned utility or a co-op that has not opted into retail competition serves it. On CenterPoint's lines, the utility creates a new building's ESI ID on request; the Houston business page walks through those steps.^1,2,3,4

Start from what the space will run. List each piece of equipment with its rated kW and the hours it runs, since kW times hours is kWh. Add cooling for the months you will be open, and note what runs at the same time: equipment running together can raise the account's peak demand.

Square footage and building type give a first figure: the usage estimator on this site turns them into a monthly estimate from EIA's commercial buildings survey. Treat it as a range. In that survey, the middle half of buildings of each type below differed by two and a half times or more in use per square foot.⁶

By EIA's data, the average Texas commercial account used about 9,701 kWh a month in the 12 months from July 2025 to June 2026. That average spans every account from a small storefront to a hospital, including accounts served by city-owned utilities and co-ops, so a single new location can land far above or below it.⁷

Use also moves with the season. By our arithmetic on EIA's monthly data, the average Texas commercial account used about 30% more power in August 2024 than in April 2024. One month times twelve hides that, so project the year month by month.⁷

A closer check than any average is the space's own past. If it had a tenant before you, that tenant's bills show what the space used. Texas rules treat a customer's meter data as that customer's information, which the customer may authorize others to see, so the bills come from that tenant. Their equipment and hours were not yours.⁵

Price every offer on the same projected kWh, start month and term. For a small commercial account, one with peak demand under 50 kW, each offer's Electricity Facts Label shows the average price at 1,500, 2,500 and 3,500 kWh a month, at a 30% load factor where demand charges apply. Compare at the level nearest your estimate.^8,9

Delivery is billed under the utility's PUCT-approved tariff, and how delivery, demand and pass-through charges appear in an offer differs by supplier, so ask us and we'll check each offer. Ask too how the contract treats usage that lands well above or below the estimate.¹⁰

A supplier sets its own nondiscriminatory credit criteria for a business. If the business cannot show satisfactory credit under them, the supplier may require a deposit, though not from a governmental entity. The Houston business page covers deposits.¹¹

Rates priced on a ZIP and a usage figure carry no name, so seeing them takes no paperwork. A pricing request that names your business and sends its details to suppliers is different: Texas rules bar a broker from releasing a client's proprietary information unless the client authorizes it in writing.¹²

Voltcheckr sends such a request only after you sign a letter of authorization. The letter is sent by hand, after a conversation about your account. No automated email carries one or asks for your signature.

A new meter starts its record on the first day of service. Texas rules require 15-minute data from an advanced meter to reach the utilities' web portal by the day after. That portal, Smart Meter Texas, is run by CenterPoint and the other delivery utilities, and it keeps two years of that data.^5,13,14

The market itself treats a year as the yardstick. ERCOT's rules start a new business meter on a default load profile, and its retailer can ask to change it once the meter has 12 months of usage. When the first contract nears its end, that year of real usage can price the next one. Renewal timing has its own guide.¹⁵

1. 1

   Confirm the address

   Check the service address and the utility that serves it before anything else. Where a ZIP holds more than one utility, the address decides.

2. 2

   Build a monthly estimate

   Work from your space, equipment and hours, month by month, and keep a note of the basis so a supplier can check it.

3. 3

   Ask about the last tenant

   If the space had one, ask for its past bills. They show what the space used, not what your business will.

4. 4

   Price every offer the same way

   Same estimate, same start month, same term. For a small commercial account, compare each label's average price at the level nearest your estimate.

5. 5

   Read the contract before you sign

   Check the early termination fee, how usage far from the estimate is treated, and how delivery and demand charges appear.

Questions? Call (469) 708-9311