The real choice isn’t software vs software. It’s whether to add capacity or add capability.
When commercial energy buyers, sustainability teams, or PPA buyers need better intelligence, the usual options are:
Each has real costs and real limitations.
Typical cost for a senior energy or sustainability analyst, excluding management overhead and tools.
One person’s time, one person’s knowledge, one person’s availability.
Coverage gaps when they’re on leave. Continuity risk if they leave the business. A single point of failure for institutional knowledge. Competing priorities when the team scales.
Delivers the daily market intelligence, Scope 2 emissions calculations, load shift recommendations and scenario analysis that would otherwise require an analyst’s time. Frees the analyst you do hire to focus on strategy, stakeholder engagement and judgement calls, not data gathering.
$5,000–15,000 per Scope 2 reporting engagement. $20,000–50,000 for a bespoke market analysis. Annual retainers for energy procurement advisory from $30,000+.
Expert analysis on a defined scope, with a defined turnaround.
Real-time access to the underlying data. Continuity between engagements. The ability to ask follow-up questions without scope change orders. Institutional knowledge that stays with you, not the consultant.
Scope 2 tracker replaces consultant-led emissions reporting for most standard use cases. Watt provides on-demand analysis without scope change orders. Dashboard, alerts and PDF export produce the same artefacts a consultant would deliver, instantly.
Compounded by the time of whoever has to rebuild them when that person leaves.
Control and customisation for specific internal questions.
288 dispatch intervals per day across six regions is more than a spreadsheet can keep up with. No automated alerts. No audit trail. No AI analyst to ask follow-up questions. Significant key-person risk.
Replaces the manual data gathering, calculation, and monitoring workflows entirely. Keeps spreadsheets for the bespoke analysis that actually benefits from them.
gridIQ is designed to extend your team’s capacity, not replace your people. Analysts and sustainability specialists remain essential for judgement, stakeholder engagement, and strategic decisions. gridIQ handles the intelligence gathering, monitoring, and reporting that would otherwise consume those specialists’ time.
A single PPA evaluation from a specialist energy advisory (firms like ACIL Allen, Oakley Greenwood, Cornwall Insight Australia) typically runs A$30,000–A$80,000. A year of gridIQ Enterprise is A$29,990, with PPA backtesting, contract mark-to-market, IRSR auction spreads and Watt AI for every PPA you evaluate, not just the one you paid for.
Specialist consulting is the right call for one-off transactions and bespoke modelling. gridIQ is the right call for the ten PPAs you’d like to evaluate before you decide which one is worth the consulting spend.