Terms of use and legal notice

1. Legal notice — identification of the publisher

Published in compliance with article 10 of Spanish Law 34/2002 of 11 July on information society services and electronic commerce (LSSI-CE).

On the postal address and the tax identification number. Article 10 requires a provider carrying on an economic activity to publish its address and its tax number. Neither is shown in full on this page, and the omission is deliberate rather than an oversight.

This is a one-person publication written from home, so the address that would appear here is a home address. A published home address is enough for a reader who dislikes an article to turn up at it; a published national identity number is enough for a third party to impersonate its holder. Neither is of the slightest use to somebody reading about demand charges. The country of establishment is stated above, because that is what determines the applicable law, and it is the part of an address that a reader can actually do something with.

Full identification, address and tax number included, will be provided without delay to any authority, or to any person with a legitimate interest, on written request to contact@thedemandcharge.com. If and when the publisher registers as carrying on an economic activity, this section changes and both are published here.

2. Acceptance

Using this site means accepting these terms as they stand at the time of the visit. If you do not accept them, do not use the site. The publisher may change them; the version in force is always the one published here, and a material change is announced on the site in words rather than signalled by a date stamp.

3. What the site is

The Demand Charge is an editorial publication about how commercial and industrial electricity is priced in the United States. It is general information. It is not consultancy, not engineering advice, not legal advice, not tax advice and not a recommendation to buy any product. The limits are set out in full in the disclaimer, which forms part of these terms.

4. Conditions of use

You may read, print and quote from this site. You may not:

• Use it in any way contrary to law, to these terms, or to the rights of others.
• Attempt to disrupt, overload, probe or gain unauthorized access to the site or its hosting.
• Extract content systematically by automated means for republication, including for the purpose of training a system that reproduces it.
• Present this site's content as your own, or reproduce whole articles without permission.

5. Intellectual property

All content on this site — text, structure, source code, stylesheets, the illustrations and the explanatory diagrams — is the original work of the publisher and is protected by Spanish Royal Legislative Decree 1/1996 approving the consolidated text of the Intellectual Property Act, and by the international conventions that apply.

What you may do without asking: quote a reasonable extract for comment, criticism, teaching or news reporting, with attribution and a link to the page quoted.

What needs permission: reproducing a whole article, reproducing the illustrations or diagrams separately from the article they belong to, or any commercial republication. Ask at contact@thedemandcharge.com; the answer is often yes.

Third-party names, standards and trademarks mentioned in articles — utilities, regional transmission organizations, agencies, standards bodies, software products — belong to their respective owners and are used descriptively. Their appearance implies no affiliation with or endorsement of this site in either direction.

6. Links out

Articles link to primary sources: federal agencies, national laboratories, standards bodies, regulators and utility tariff documents. Those sites are not under the publisher's control. Linking to a document is not an endorsement of everything else on the site that hosts it, and the publisher is not responsible for their content or availability.

7. Availability

The site is provided as it is. No uptime is guaranteed, and the publisher may change, suspend or withdraw all or part of it at any time without notice. Content is written carefully and corrected when it is wrong, but no warranty is given that it is complete, current or fit for any particular purpose.

8. Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the publisher is not liable for any loss arising from use of this site or reliance on its content, including any decision about a tariff, a capital purchase or a change to plant operation. Nothing here limits liability for fraud, for willful misconduct, or for anything else that cannot be limited under the applicable law — including the rights of consumers under Spanish Royal Legislative Decree 1/2007.

9. Advertising

The site is funded by advertising, and in future by affiliate commission. What that means, and what it does not buy, is set out in the advertising disclosure.

10. Data protection

Personal data is processed as described in the privacy policy and the cookie policy.

11. Governing law and jurisdiction

These terms are governed by the law of Spain. Any dispute is subject to the courts of the publisher's domicile, without prejudice to any court a consumer is entitled to bring proceedings before under mandatory law.

12. Nullity

If any provision here is found unenforceable, it is severed and the remainder stands.