Requirements and Limitations
The following data requirements and limitations apply to all utilities and business customers in the High Bill Alert AMI program.
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Requirements
Utility Requirements
| Category |
Description |
|---|---|
|
Scale |
Scale restrictions may apply to the number of customers enrolled in alerts. The actual number of communications sent may be affected by attrition, opt-outs, customer eligibility, data availability, and the number of customers whose forecasted usage exceeds configured thresholds. |
| Language | Not all languages and locales are supported at this time. Contact your Oracle Utilities Opower Sales Representative to confirm that alerts are available in your market. |
| Delivery Window | High Bill Alerts AMI must be delivered during waking hours in a utility-specific delivery window. They cannot be delivered during the configured non-delivery window. |
| Delivery Frequency | High Bill Alerts AMI are limited to being sent once per billing period per service point to avoid excessive alerting. |
| Rate Modeling | Utility rates must be modeled by Oracle Utilities for cost information to appear. If rates are not modeled, energy use information is displayed by default. If the utility chooses to display cost information, rate modeling is required during initial program setup for an additional fee. See the Oracle Utilities Opower Rates Engagement Cloud Service Product Overview for more information. |
| Other Product Requirements |
|
Customer Requirements
|
Category |
Description |
|---|---|
| Billing Frequency | Monthly or bi-monthly. |
|
Data Delivery Frequency |
Daily. The utility must be able to deliver customer data to Oracle Utilities within 72 hours (48 hours from the last data read of the day). Data must be sent to Oracle Utilities in the right schema and according to the Oracle Utilities Opower Interval Data Transfer Standards. |
|
Data Requirements |
Billing Data: Billed usage data from the utility is required. AMI Data: Daily, hourly, or sub-hourly AMI data is required. High Bill Alerts AMI will not be sent without this level of data granularity. The customer must have AMI data going back to the beginning of the current billing cycle. Hourly or subhourly AMI data is required for the Time of Day module (otherwise that module is hidden). AMI data is not required for weather insights to appear in the Time of Day module. Contact Information: The customer must have valid contact information for the channels through which they receive High Bill Alerts AMI. |
|
Data History |
AMI data going back to the beginning of the current billing cycle is required. For customers who do not have a personal cost threshold set, at least a year's worth of billing history is required. For customers who do have a personal cost threshold set, a year’s worth of usage data is not required. More information about personal thresholds can be found in the Bill Forecast module topic. |
|
Data Coverage |
By default, at least 75% of the possible reads for the current billing cycle are required to calculate the bill forecast. Estimated reads count towards this threshold. This threshold is configurable. At least 75% of possible reads for the current billing cycle is required to calculate the customer's high usage period. If this threshold is not met, the Time of Day module is hidden. |
|
Supported Fuels |
Electricity and gas. |
Limitations
- Dual Fuel Customers: Dual fuel (gas and electricity) customers will receive a single combined fuel alert.
- Number of Service Points: To avoid over-alerting, multiple service points of the same fuel type (in the same service agreement) are combined and sent in a single alert.