The short answer
Bundles reduce supplier acquisition cost — they price that back to you.
Aggregating 8 storefronts under one supplier contract often clears 1.5–2.5% better than each site shopping alone. The math is structural: bundles reduce the supplier's customer acquisition cost, and suppliers price that back to you. This guide walks through when bundles win, when they do not (cross-state portfolios often need separate contracts), and how to coordinate expiry dates across the portfolio.
Why bundles price better than individual shopping
A supplier's customer acquisition cost is roughly the same whether they win a 30 MWh/yr account or a 300 MWh/yr account. The difference is the volume across which the cost is spread.
On a 30 MWh/yr single site, the supplier needs to recover the acquisition cost across 30,000 kWh of supply margin. On a 300 MWh/yr bundle, the same cost is spread across 300,000 kWh — 10x more volume to amortise across. The supplier prices 1.5–2.5% lower on the bundle for the same risk profile.
The savings flow through to the buyer in a lower locked rate. On a $25,000/mo bundle that is $375–$625/mo, $9,000–$15,000 over a 24-month term.
Infographic
Cumulative savings on a 24-month bundled lock
When bundles do not work — cross-state and mixed-utility
Bundles work best when sites share a utility or a PJM/ERCOT zone. Cross-state bundles often need separate contracts per state because state PUC license boundaries do not allow a single contract to cover multiple states.
Mixed-utility bundles inside the same state can work but with a small premium — suppliers have to maintain billing relationships with each utility, which adds back some of the acquisition-cost savings.
If a bundle is genuinely cross-state, the alternative is to coordinate expiry dates across separate contracts so the entire portfolio re-shops in the same window. The expiry-coordination strategy captures most of the bundle savings without requiring a single contract.
Expiry coordination — the synthetic bundle
For a portfolio of sites that cannot legally share a single contract, the next-best strategy is to coordinate expiry dates so the entire portfolio re-shops in the same window — typically September.
The first time this requires absorbing a small early-termination fee on one or two sites to align expiry dates. After the alignment, the synthetic bundle re-shops every two years in the same window with no further coordination cost.
For 12-month locks the alignment cost is recovered in the first re-shop window. For 24-month locks, the alignment cost is recovered inside the first contract.
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Sources
About the author
Harry ParkerEnergy Consultant, Seenra Inc
Energy Consultant at Seenra Inc. Harry advises US commercial buyers and households on supplier procurement, multi-site aggregation, and the operator-level math behind locked-rate contracts. Eight years on the buy side across PJM and ERCOT zones — he has run the load profile, the reverse auction, and the renewal calendar for portfolios from 50 kW restaurants to 18 MW manufacturing campuses.