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I'm putting together a business plan for a startup, and I need to provide an estimate for utility costs. For my plan, this is an office of 12 employees with an average of 2 CPU's per workstation. Plus there will be a small server room with a half dozen servers plus lighting and kitchen. This is in the Chicago market.

How do I find out how much this will cost? Heat/air + electricity for a 2500 sqft office?

Edit: I do not have a particular property in mind. I'm just doing the business plan to try to secure funding.

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Ask the utility company and the landlord of the building. Or a commercial real estate broker. You can also just use a rough estimate of 5% to 15% cost of overhead on top of a person's salary. It's a wide range but should be usable. (that includes rent as well - not just utilities). Unless you're running MRI machines or radar or something, the utilities are not going to make or break you - the rent and salaries are the big factors. You're at a 2nd or 3rd order magnitude expense when looking at utilities. – TimJ♦ Aug 15 '12 at 2:07

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That depends where you are located and age of HVAC equipment. In addition, many office leases include HVAC during business hours, but you do pay other utilities. General rule is $2 per square foot per year EXCLUDING HVAC. I never paid tipple-net, but utilities with HVAC on 2500 would like run you $1K per month excluding maintenance on HVAC.

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If you have a particular property in mind, ask the current/previous occupants to give you info on what they paid.

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