We Can Receive Consumption From Service Providers
We can receive consumption from any source. We use the standard meter read upload to interface consumption from service providers. Because we use the standard meter read upload, each customer must have:
- A premise
- A service point
- A meter with registers sufficient to hold the interfaced consumption
You don't have to perfectly model the service points and meters. If you are not the distribution company, you may be worried about how to keep meter and service point information up-to-date. Be aware that you don't have to model the SP's and meters perfectly. Why? Because you just need to set up enough information so that consumption can be uploaded accurately. Let's use an example of a customer with multiple meters and service points at a premise. Rather than model this perfectly, you could set up a single SP and link to it a single meter. All that matters is that the meter has the appropriate registers to hold the interfaced consumption.
When a customer's consumption (i.e., meter reads) is uploaded from a service provider, the service provider must be defined as the "upload source" on the meter read upload staging records. The system uses this information to validate that the service provider is linked to the customer on the effective date of the read AND that they are defined as Sending Consumption To Us. Refer to Uploading Meter Reads for more information.