Build a gas budget without pretending to predict prices in Virginia

Virginia: Budget the exposed components rather than one future rate

Start with EIA: supply, demand, weather and storage price drivers. The table below links this decision to the represented gas companies in Virginia. It does not establish service or supplier availability for every account.

Create a scenario register

Keep monthly usage, index assumptions, location differential, fixed charges and exposed adjustments in separate columns. Name the source and observation date for market data. A supplier’s written formula determines how an observation reaches the bill.

Use a revision trigger

Set an internal review date and identify operational changes that justify a new budget: closure, added shifts, equipment replacement or a corrected baseline. Keep a downside scenario visible without presenting it as a prediction or creating unsupported urgency.

Virginia utility application

Washington Gas: the program detail behind this decision

Virginia SCC directs customers to utility-specific natural-gas choice information. Washington Gas and Columbia gas arrangements must be checked against the actual company, class and supplier participation. A regional SCC map is an approximation; it cannot determine a property’s eligibility or substitute for the account’s bill. Program Virginia.

Apply the evidence to an account file

Give Utility supply alternative, supplier fees and retained transportation/delivery its own documented model assumptions. Validate Washington Gas or Columbia gas company and the eligible commercial category before using a utility comparison component; a forecast for a different class is not this meter’s available alternative.

An assumption register that can be updated without rewriting history

Record each month’s therms, price mechanism, assumed benchmark, location/service adders, recurring fees and retained utility charges. Keep the original budget alongside revisions and actuals. Change one driver at a time to identify sensitivity, then test a combined adverse scenario. For a fixed commodity offer, leave that defined component fixed over its contractual months while varying usage and genuinely exposed items. Do not apply a current spot observation to every future month or label an invented scenario as the forecast available to the customer.

Turn the review into a calculation

Build a monthly weighted budget. Enter documented assumptions in matching energy units. Keep any charge outside both supply offers separate; the result does not establish eligibility or an available quote.

Read the Virginia utility guide for the wider service-company distinctions. Convert billed gas units using the bill’s heat-content factor when moving from volume to energy.