Estimating Using Historical Consumption

One of the sample estimation algorithms provided with the base package attempts to estimate consumption using historical data for the account and service point.

When you estimate consumption using historical data, you assume that the customer will have current consumption that is similar to their historical usage. For example, if you need to estimate consumption for the month of February of the current year, you could assume that the customer has similar consumption during the month of February of the previous year or that they have similar consumption to the previous month.

The base package algorithm type that uses a customer's historical data to estimate consumption is called TSMRE-LA (three-step meter read estimation). It makes three attempts to estimate consumption stopping at the first successful attempt.

First, it tries to estimate consumption using a bill segment for the service point from the previous year that covers a similar period to the one being estimated. The year-old bill segment can be used for estimation if it is for the same account AND the bill segment's end read is not a system estimate AND there are enough days in the bill segment for estimation (as defined by the algorithm).

If the year-old bill segment cannot be used for estimation, the system attempts to use the bill segment for the account and service point that immediately precedes the start date of the estimation period. Again, this bill segment must not have an estimated end read and it must have a sufficient number of days for estimation.

Once a historical bill segment that can be used for estimation is located (using one of the above methods), the estimation occurs as follows:

• If the register is non-peak, the system calculates the average amount of consumption per day on the historical bill segment and multiplies this by the number of days in the current estimation period. For example, if the customer averaged 30.350877 kWh per day in the historical bill period and there are 30 days in the current period, the estimated consumption is: 911 kWh.
• If the register is peak, the estimation amount is the same as the peak amount on the historical bill segment.

If the system is unsuccessful in estimating consumption using the historical data for the previous year or the previous bill period, the system estimates consumption using trends .