Setting Up Consumption Estimation Parameters
The system estimates consumption under the following situations:
- At billing time, when "real" consumption cannot be computed due
to the lack of a meter read, the system estimates how much the customer
used assuming the following conditions are true:
- The service agreement allows estimation.
- The rate schedule allows estimation.
- The bill cycle schedule (if one is being used) allows estimation.
- The register is not a peak register (this is an artificial constraint, but most organizations do not estimate peak consumption). Note that the base product estimation algorithms may attempt to estimate peak registers.
- The register is subtractive. This is because only subtractive registers are self-correcting. For example, assume we estimate a reading of 100 and the next real read is 102, the customer will only be charged for 2 units. But consider what would happen if we estimated a consumptive register, the consumption associated with the next real read will be billed in its entirety.
- When a meter read is added, the system verifies that the resultant consumption is congruous with historical consumption trends (i.e., high / low checks are performed).
This section describes the tables that must be set up to estimate consumption.