⚡  New: City of Johannesburg 2025/26 tariffs loaded · We can check your demand charges against the new rates

Reclaim electricity overcharges

Analysing your electricity bill.
Quantifying incorrect charges.
Building your dispute case.
Check metering against invoiced metering.

Billing analysis: upload your invoices to have them analysed for over-charges. Check metering: independently measuring and viewing online your actual energy consumption (kWh) and peak demand (kVA). Check metering with billing analysis: upload your invoices to have them analysed for over-charges, and compare against your independently measured consumption (kWh) and peak demand (kVA).
Suspect a historic over-charge? That's the bill review. Want new bills checked as they arrive instead? See ongoing monitoring below. Either way you get your own dashboard and a downloadable report.

Identifying utility over-charges

  • Consumption charges vs metered consumption
  • Peak demand errors:
    too many charges, incorrect kVA, incorrect tariff rate
  • Re-billing errors (“estimates” replaced by “actuals”)
  • Billed consumption and demand vs check meter
Two ways Panda helps with your bills

Recover the past — or check every bill going forward

Most clients start by having their past bills reviewed for over-charging, then keep new bills honest with ongoing monitoring. Do one, or both.

Identify and quantify overcharges
INVOICE

Historic bill review

Think you've been overbilled? Send the invoices from the period you're worried about — months or years — and we identify and quantify every over-charge and re-billing error, then build your dispute case.

  • A one-off project on your past invoices
  • Full written analysis and a dispute-ready report
  • Long re-bills (months to years) unpicked — every credit and debit checked so net consumption is compared with your first and last meter readings
  • Duplicated or additional demand charges identified and quantified
One-off review fee · confirmed on assessment
Review my past bills → Recovering over-charges & interdicts against disconnection →
Upload bills monthly for analysis and overcharge flagging
INVOICE

Ongoing bill monitoring

Keep new bills honest. We check every invoice as it's issued — that the correct tariff rates and monthly charges are applied, the consumption charged reconciled against your meter readings, re-billing (estimates replaced by actuals) invoices reconcile with previous and new charges, and no peak-demand over-charges — so errors are caught the month they happen, not years later.

  • A subscription — one invoice per utility account each billing period
  • Your own live dashboard, with alerts on anomalies
  • Multi-year re-bills — hundreds of debits and credits reconciled against past and current invoiced readings
  • Stops small overcharges becoming big disputes
  • Add check metering to also compare each bill against your independently measured use
Subscription · R200 / utility account per month
Ask about monitoring →

Billing analysis & check metering

Three ways to prove what you should be paying — from a paperwork-only audit to independent metering that settles the argument for good.

🧾

Billing analysis

We audit years of invoices against your tariff and meter readings — catching consumption over-charging and incorrect re-billing, no hardware needed.

How it works →
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Billing analysis with check metering

The full picture: the invoice audit provided by Billing Analysis, backed by our own meter on your electrical supply — so billed figures are checked against measured reality.

How it works →

Check metering

An independent meter logging your true consumption (every 15 minutes) and peak demand (every 30), live on your account — your own numbers to check the bill against.

How it works →
How the billing analysis works

From a stack of invoices to a quantified dispute

Upload a sample of your recent bills to see exactly how your data is read, reconciled and turned into a dashboard — the same process behind every dispute we build. For a full historic dispute, you'd send the whole disputed period.

1

Upload a sample of your bills

Drag in a few consecutive invoices — enough to see how multiple bills are recorded and how the dashboard works. (A full dispute uses the whole period.) We read every line — image and text — so nothing is missed.

2

We decode your tariff

From the data we extract, we identify the applicable utility and tariff — then check that every rate (time-of-use, stepped consumption, peak-demand and the rest) and every fixed monthly charge is applied correctly and consistently, and adjusted for season, exactly as it should have been billed.

3

We reconcile billed vs actual

Across your invoices we reconcile what you were charged against the meter itself: the consumption billed must match the first and last meter readings over the period, the number of demand charges must tally with the number of billing periods, and each demand charge must be reasonable against the consumption alongside it. Over-charges and re-billing errors surface as hard numbers. On a peak-demand tariff, it's worth sending your main breaker size (in amps) — or a photo of it — so we can establish the maximum kVA your supply can physically draw.

4

You get a dashboard + a summary PDF

A clear dashboard of what you were charged, plus a downloadable PDF — also emailed to you with each new extraction — summarising the data pulled from your invoices so far and flagging any anomalies. When an anomaly is found, we alert you by email and SMS too.

What if the municipal meter readings themselves are wrong? Billing analysis checks your invoices against the utility's own readings and tariff. Add check metering and Panda puts an independent meter on your supply — measuring your true consumption (kWh) and peak demand (kVA) — so billed figures are checked against measured reality, not just the readings the utility gives you. See how check metering works →
From findings to recovery

We quantify it. Specialists recover it.

Our job is to establish and quantify the over-charge — independently, and to a standard that stands up. We build your dispute case and provide the report you make your claim with. When it comes to getting the money back, we work alongside specialists who take the dispute up with the municipality, and attorneys who litigate to recover over-charges — including urgent interdicts to stop a disconnection while a disputed account is resolved. One defensible report that all of them can act on.

How check metering works

Independent measurement, live on your account

We put our own meter on your supply and measure what you actually use — energy every 15 minutes, peak demand every 30 — and you can see it anytime on your Panda portal or on the meter display panel.

1

We install an independent meter

A non-invasive meter goes on your supply — the main incomer alongside the utility's — with no disruption to your operation.

2

It measures your real usage, continuously

Energy consumption at 15-minute intervals and peak demand at 30-minute intervals — an independent record of what you actually draw.

3

You view it anytime on your account

Live kWh and kVA on your own account on the Panda logging portal — check your real usage whenever you want.

Want your bill checked against it? On its own, check metering gives you the independent data, and you compare it to your invoices yourself. Take it with billing analysis and Panda does that for you — we pull your metered kWh and kVA for the matching invoice period, apply the tariff rates, and reconcile measured against billed automatically.
Who it's for

Built for the people who carry the electricity bill

If any of these is you, there's usually money being lost — and a clearer way to see it.

Business owners & MDs of energy-intensive operations

Manufacturing, industrial, cold storage, office complexes and shopping centres. Electricity is one of your biggest controllable costs — and nothing on the bill tells you whether you're charged correctly, or paying demand and power-factor penalties you could remove.

Facilities, asset & portfolio managers and managing agents

Tenant and common area recoveries and utility bill reconciliation, assigning peak demand charges across tenants, and municipal bills riddled with estimates and re-billing errors.

CFOs & financial managers

You own the cost line and chase the savings — but you have no independent check that the utility's bill is even correct.

Body corporates & trustees

Common-property accounts and re-billing that owners keep querying — plus unit sub-metering and common-area recoveries that have to reconcile to what the municipality actually charged.

Case studies

Real cases, independently quantified

Three real billing-analysis cases — each establishing the truth from a different independent data source: the invoices alone, the client's existing solar-monitoring data, or Panda's check metering.

80+
projects analysed
4 yrs
doing only this
100% independent
flat fee, not a cut of your savings
City Power
CoJ tariff & billing specialists

R2.7 million over-charge on a ~R95 000/month account

A commercial property's City Power account was billed 125 monthly demand charges where only 45 were due — figures never measured, several physically impossible for the supply. An earlier consultant had netted it to a fraction; Panda applied the tariff's own demand cap, logged true peak demand at 36 kVA, and identified and quantified over R2.7 million in demand over-charges — plus a further ~R240 000 in consumption over-charges. Billing dispute.

Account 2.6× over-charged — proven with the home's own solar-logger data

The home's own solar-system logging (5-minute data) quantified what it actually drew from the grid against City Power's invoiced meter readings. Complicated by a meter change — afterwards the new meter billed 11 810 kWh against only ~1 529 actually drawn. A solar logger isn't an NRCS-approved revenue meter, but it's more than accurate enough to build a dispute against the utility's readings — a low-cost independent check wherever a client already has solar. Billing dispute.

Cross-checked the solar PV production, tenant sub-meters and utility bills

At two commercial buildings, Panda independently verified three sets of figures against each other — the buildings' own solar-system logging, the tenant sub-metering, and City Power's billed consumption — to establish what was actually being used. The finding: the tenant sub-metering was running at about 194% — nearly double — the measured usage. Independent metering gave the objective numbers to prove and correct it. Check metering.

Testimonials

In their own words

“We'd already had a consultant review our municipal account. Panda went back through it independently and found far more — including peak-demand charges that had been billed over and over. They quantified it properly and gave us and our attorney a report we could actually use.”

MH
Malcolm Hozack
Owner & director, CarFax

“Panda logged the power profile on two of our municipal supplies. What made it useful was that we didn't just get raw data back — we got it interpreted, and a clear view of what to do about it.”

MP
Mark Pardini
Owner & director, TVE Motors

“We had two buildings where the electricity billing didn't look right and no independent way to check it. Panda measured what was actually being used and compared it against what was being billed. That's the only way to settle a question like that — you need your own numbers.”

GD
Gavin Dickinson
Dickinson Projects