Dispensary Retail Energy Costs: Lighting, Security, POS, HVAC

What is on a dispensary's bill

A dispensary's electric bill is a retail store's bill plus a security and compliance overlay. The loads, in rough order of annual kWh for a typical store:

• HVAC. Heating, cooling, and ventilation for a space with a lot of people moving in and out, a front door that opens hundreds of times a day, and in many states a separate vault or secure storage room with its own conditions.
• Lighting. Sales floor, display cases, back of house, exterior and parking, and exit and emergency lighting that runs continuously.
• Security. Cameras, network video recorders, access control, alarm panels, and the battery systems behind them. Massachusetts' regulations, for example, require video cameras enabled to record 24 hours each day, recordings available for at least the preceding 90 calendar days, and the ability to remain operational during a power outage for a minimum of four hours, with coverage of all areas that may contain marijuana, vaults or safes for cash, all points of entry and exit, and the parking lot [ma-cmr-500-110]. Other states' rules differ in detail but not in the 24-hour principle.
• Refrigeration. Display coolers and freezers for edibles, beverages, and some concentrates, plus back-of-house storage.
• Point of sale and IT. Registers, tablets, printers, ID scanners, servers or network gear for the seed-to-sale system, and the internet connection everything depends on.
• Plug loads and other. Break room, water heater, signage.

None of these is exotic. What makes the dispensary different from the shoe store next door is that the security and refrigeration pieces run all night, and the regulator does not care that the store is closed.

What retail buildings actually use, per square foot

The best public benchmark is the U.S. Energy Information Administration's Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey. Its 2018 electricity intensity figures for the building types closest to a dispensary:

Building type (2018 CBECS)	Electricity per sq ft per year	Median building	Electricity spend per sq ft
Retail (other than mall)	13.7 kWh	9.0 kWh	1.31 dollars
Mercantile, all	16.7 kWh	12.5 kWh	1.54 dollars
Enclosed and strip malls	19.6 kWh	20.1 kWh	1.74 dollars
Food sales (grocery and convenience)	53.3 kWh	47.4 kWh	5.27 dollars
Office	13.6 kWh	10.1 kWh	1.42 dollars
All commercial buildings	12.6 kWh	8.6 kWh	1.25 dollars

All figures from EIA's Table C14 [eia-cbecs-2018-c14]. The dollar figures are 2018 spend at 2018 prices, which averaged about 9.9 cents per kWh across all buildings in that survey [eia-cbecs-2018-c14]; commercial prices in June 2026 averaged 14.19 cents nationally and ranged from 8.66 cents in Texas to 27.33 cents in California [eia-epm-5-6-a], so scale accordingly.

Where a dispensary lands in that table depends on refrigeration. A store with a couple of beverage coolers behaves like non-mall retail, around 13.7 kWh per square foot. A store that leans hard on chilled edibles and drinks with a wall of glass-door merchandisers starts to drift toward the food sales category, where refrigeration is why intensity is four times higher [eia-cbecs-2018-c14]. Hours matter too: a store open 14 hours a day, seven days, runs its lighting and HVAC roughly 40 percent more hours than a store open 10 hours, six days.

For a first estimate, assume 14 kWh per square foot for a standard store and 20 or more for one with heavy refrigeration and long hours, then correct it with your own bills. The facility energy cost calculator will take either input.

The 24/7 baseline: security and refrigeration

The overnight load is worth estimating on its own because it is the part you cannot schedule away.

Cameras and recorders. Axis, a major camera manufacturer, publishes typical and maximum power for each model; its white paper example lists a typical draw of 4.7 W with heater and infrared off and a maximum of 12.6 W [axis-camera-power]. Outdoor cameras with heaters and IR run toward the maximum in winter and at night. A store with 30 cameras averaging 8 W is 240 W of cameras, plus a network video recorder or server (assume 150 to 300 W), a PoE switch (assume 50 to 100 W), and an uninterruptible power supply that meets the four-hour backup rule [ma-cmr-500-110] while also consuming a little power to stay charged. Call the security stack 500 W around the clock: 4,380 kWh a year.

Refrigeration. ENERGY STAR certified commercial refrigerators and freezers are on average 20 percent more efficient than standard models, and the program estimates a certified glass door refrigerator saves about 370 kWh a year, while a certified glass door freezer saves about 900 kWh a year, versus standard units [energystar-commercial-refrigeration]. Those savings figures imply that a single standard glass-door merchandiser uses on the order of 1,500 to 2,000 kWh a year and a glass-door freezer several thousand; four or five display units can therefore be 8,000 to 12,000 kWh a year on their own. Glass doors, anti-sweat heaters, and the door-opening rate all push the number up. Buy certified units and keep the condenser coils clean.

Everything else that never turns off. Exit lighting, alarm panels, the internet gateway, the POS server, a water heater, and HVAC holding a vault setpoint. Assume another 500 W to 1 kW.

Add it up and a closed dispensary idles at roughly 2 to 3 kW. That is 17,000 to 26,000 kWh a year of baseline, which for a 3,000 square foot store near the retail average is a third to a half of all its electricity. Reducing it means efficient refrigeration, LED exit and security lighting, and turning off what the regulations do not require to stay on, in that order.

The wrong-rate-class problem

This is where dispensaries lose the most money, and it has nothing to do with kWh.

Utilities split small and medium commercial customers into classes by peak demand, and the classes are billed differently. ComEd's nonresidential delivery classes are a clear example. The Watt-Hour delivery class pays a distribution facilities charge of 3.308 cents per kWh and no per-kW demand charge; the Small Load class, for customers from 0 to 100 kW, pays 14.58 dollars per kW of demand instead, plus a higher metering charge; and the Medium Load class, above 100 kW to 400 kW, pays 14.94 dollars per kW with a customer charge of 34.08 dollars a month against 22.81 dollars for Small Load [comed-nonres-line-items-2025]. Which class a store lands in depends on its measured peak and the utility's assignment rules; the mechanics are covered in utility rate classes explained.

Run the two structures for a dispensary that uses 4,000 kWh a month and peaks at 20 kW, using those ComEd numbers as inputs:

• Watt-Hour style: 4,000 kWh x 0.03308 = 132 dollars of distribution facilities charge.
• Small Load style: 20 kW x 14.58 dollars = 292 dollars of distribution facilities charge.

The difference is 160 dollars a month, about 1,900 dollars a year, on one line of a delivery bill, for the same electricity. Whether a given store is eligible for the lower class is the utility's call based on its rules and your metered peak, but the point is to ask, because assignment mistakes are common in three situations:

1. Buildout. The electrician requested a large service for a build that included a kitchen or a grow that never happened, and the account was assigned to a demand class on expected load.
2. Inherited meters. The previous tenant was a restaurant or a small manufacturer with a 90 kW peak. Your store peaks at 25 kW. The class, and sometimes a ratchet on the prior peak, followed the meter; see demand charges explained for how ratchets work.
3. Threshold creep. A store adds a walk-in cooler and a few more merchandisers and its peak crosses 25 kW, or 50, or 100, whatever the utility's line is, and quietly moves up a class the next year.

Reading the delivery section of your bill tells you which class you are in; understanding your commercial utility bill shows where to look.

A worked example

Every number here is an input we chose. Replace with your own.

Assume a 3,000 square foot dispensary, open 12 hours a day, seven days a week, in a state where the commercial price is 14.5 cents per kWh all-in (Illinois' June 2026 commercial average was 14.53 cents [eia-epm-5-6-a]).

Load	Basis	Annual kWh
Security stack, 24/7	500 W x 8,760 h	4,380
Refrigeration, five glass-door units	Assume 2,000 kWh each, consistent with ENERGY STAR savings figures [energystar-commercial-refrigeration]	10,000
Other continuous loads	750 W x 8,760 h	6,570
Sales floor and display lighting	4 kW x 12 h x 365	17,520
HVAC	Assume 1 kWh per hour open, average across seasons, plus 0.3 kWh per hour closed	5,694
POS, IT, plug loads during hours	1.5 kW x 12 h x 365	6,570
Total		about 50,700 kWh

That is about 16.9 kWh per square foot, a bit above the non-mall retail average of 13.7 [eia-cbecs-2018-c14] because of the refrigeration and the seven-day schedule, and consistent with the table above. At 14.5 cents the energy is about 7,350 dollars a year, or 613 dollars a month. The store's peak, with lighting, HVAC, and refrigeration all on in a summer afternoon, is perhaps 18 to 22 kW.

Now the rate class question from the previous section: on a non-demand class this store's delivery charges are driven by its 4,225 kWh a month; on a demand class they are driven by its roughly 20 kW peak. Using the ComEd figures as inputs, that is the 160 dollar a month gap, and for this store it is about a quarter of its monthly energy cost.

Where the savings actually are, ranked

1. Confirm the rate class. Costs a phone call. For a small store it can be the largest single saving available.
2. Buy ENERGY STAR refrigeration and maintain it. Certified units are on average 20 percent more efficient [energystar-commercial-refrigeration], and the units run every hour of the year.
3. LED everything, including exit signs and exterior. Retail lighting is the biggest hours-of-operation load; the exit and security lighting runs 8,760 hours.
4. Set HVAC back at close. Except for the vault, the store does not need daytime conditions overnight. Confirm any product storage temperature requirements with your regulator before widening setpoints.
5. Right-size the camera system's supporting gear. The cameras themselves are small; oversized servers and switches that run at 30 percent utilization are where the watts hide.
6. Shop supply only when it pencils. A single store is a small account. A chain in one utility territory can aggregate stores into one contract, which is where fixed, index, and block-and-index contracts start to matter. Community solar, where it exists, fits a store's steady load well.

More short answers are in the typical dispensary electric bill FAQ.