Baseline Energy
A live web tool that shows Alberta businesses whether the electricity or natural gas quote their broker gave them is fair.
The problem
Alberta businesses buy electricity and natural gas through brokers and retailers. The quoted price includes the wholesale cost plus a margin, but the business cannot see how much of the price is margin. Most have no easy way to tell a fair quote from an expensive one.
Baseline Energy is an independent advisory program within Energy Associates International. It never sells electricity or gas, so it has no reason to favour any supplier.
What I built
The Alberta Energy Broker Quote Decoder. A business enters the details of a quote. The tool compares the quoted price against Alberta wholesale forward prices for the same period and gives one of three results: Fair, Overcharging or Way Overcharging. Each result explains what it means and what to do next.
The tool is honest about its limits. A clear note on every result explains that it uses an average assumption for load shape, and that a business's real usage pattern and credit history change the answer. The next step it offers is a real review of the business's own data.
How it works
- Hosting
- Static site on Netlify, with a serverless function for checks that must stay private
- Market data
- A weekly update script reads Alberta forward pricing and refreshes the tool. Data older than 7 days shows amber, older than 14 days shows red.
- Privacy
- Real past transaction prices are used to check results, but are held encrypted and checked on the server. They never appear in the page.
- Verification
- Email confirmed with a one-time code, plus a bot check
- Consent
- Consent flows for Canada's anti-spam law, a privacy notice and terms of service
- Follow-up
- A separate email sequence for each result, plus one for visitors who start but do not finish, with leads passed to the sales system
Decisions I made
- Removed the business-email requirement.Marketing reported it was losing leads. I removed the gate so any valid email reaches the tool.
- Lead with the bigger number.For an overcharging result, the page leads with the hidden margin. For a fair result, it leads with the cost of buying at the wrong time, which is often larger.
- Show every step.The internal tools behind the decoder show each intermediate calculation, so every result can be checked by hand.
- Trust before data.The free call after a result is a conversation, not a data grab. Usage data is requested only once the client is ready, and made as easy as possible to share.
Teaching
Through Baseline Energy I teach business clients every day how Alberta's energy market works, the difference between demand and usage charges, and how to read their energy invoices. The same plain-language approach runs through the decoder's results and emails.