Personal Tracker

The Personal Tracker is an optional module that provides customers with up to one year's comparison of their current year's usage to the previous year. It offers a range of data scenarios, displaying usage information across as few as three bills or as many as two full years of bills. The module includes an evaluative statement that assesses the customer's performance, a bar chart for visualization, seasonal helpers, and insights into why their energy use may have increased, decreased, or remained the same. The goal of the module is to provide customers with important insights into their energy use in order to help them make informed decisions about their consumption and improve their overall efficiency.

Appears in: Progress Report, Usage Lookback Report

On this page:

Requirements

Utility Requirements

Category	Description
Required Cloud Service	Oracle Utilities Opower Energy Efficiency Cloud Service
Scale	Not applicable.

Customer Requirements

Category	Description
Billing Frequency	Monthly, bi-monthly, or quarterly.
Data Delivery Frequency	Monthly, bi-monthly, or quarterly.
Data Requirements	Billed usage data.
Data History	A minimum of one historical bill.
Data Coverage	Not applicable.
Supported Fuels	Progress Reports: Electric-only, gas-only, dual fuel.

Limitations

The module can only be used in the Progress Report.

User Experience

Progress Report

This section describes the Progress Report user experience for an electric-only customer.

Personal Tracker for an electric customer

Header: The header informs the customer that the module is a comparison of their current energy use to the previous year.

Bar chart: The bar chart displays the customer's bills over time and provides a comparison to previous energy use if enough data is available. The chart can accommodate different reporting periods. By default it will compare the customer's energy usage month over month going as far back as the beginning of the previous year. It also supports customers that have bimonthly or quarterly bill periods.

Unit of Measure: The unit of measurement varies by fuel type: kWh, Therms, and units.
Legend: The legend differentiates which bars on the chart are from the current and previous year, and which bars are from the current bill and the same billing period from the previous year.
Seasonal Icons: Icons located above the chart place indicate the season in which the bill occurred.

Insight: The insight located directly below the chart legend informs the customer if their energy use has increased or decreased since the previous bill period..

Secondary Insight: The secondary insight of the Personal Tracker module provides explanations for why their energy use may have increased or decreased compared to the previous billing period, particularly in relation to changes in temperature. The module uses weather insights calculations to determines whether the average temperature was higher or lower between the current and comparison billing periods. Based on this calculation, Personal Tracker provides suggestions as to why the customer's energy use increased or decreased.

Usage Lookback Report

The Personal Tracker module for the Usage Lookback Report provides customers with a comparison of their current gas and heating season’s usage to the previous season.

Personal Tracker module for the Usage Lookback Report

Header: The header informs the customer that the module is a comparison of the current gas and heating season to the gas and heating season of the previous year.

Bar chart: The bar chart displays the customer's current gas and heating season use over time and provides a comparison to the previous season's gas use. The Personal Tracker module accommodates the monthly, and bimonthly billing periods that occur during the gas and heating season. The data displayed in the chart is determined by an algorithm that aligns multiple years' bill period data to the calendar months of the season so that customers receive the best year-over-year comparison possible.

Unit of Measure: The unit of measurement for gas customers is therms.
X-axis: The month shown on the x-axis of a bar graph is the month that had the most days of the bill period. For example if a bill period was January 29-February 28, it would display the February bar.
Legend: The legend differentiates which bars on the chart are from the current season and previous year's season.
Insight: The insight located directly below the chart legend informs the customer of their highest gas and heating season month from the current season and previous season, and includes the following information:
- Highest use month
- Number of therms used
- Average low temperature

User Experience Variations

The user experience of the feature may vary for customers and utilities depending on their service types (gas, electricity, dual fuel, and so on), available data, costs, locale, and other factors.

Fuel Type

The module varies by customer fuel type:

Dual Fuel: For dual-fuel customers, 'energy use 'is used in the module title and insights. The measurements are in units.

Gas: For gas customers, gas-specific language us used in the title and insight. The measurements are in therms.

Energy States

The copy of the first and second insight varies depending on the customer's energy state and fuel type.

Energy State	Primary Insight	Secondary Insight
Energy use decreased compared to last billing period	What could have caused your [gas/energy/net energy] use to decrease? Changes in your household this period, like using less hot water than usual or fewer people at home, may have lowered your [gas/energy/net energy] use.	Comparing this bill period to a similar period last year, your [gas use/energy/net energy] use decreased XX [therms/units/kWh]
Energy use increased compared to last billing period	What could have caused your [gas/energy net energy] use to increase? Changes in your household this period like using more hot water than usual or a long-term guest may have contributed.	Comparing this bill period to a similar period last year, your [gas/energy/ net energy] use increased XX [therms/units/kWh]
Energy use is similar to last billing period	How could you lower your [gas/energy use/net energy] use? Upgrade to water-efficient appliances. If your appliances use less water, you won’t be spending as much on water heating.	Comparing this bill period to a similar period last year, your [gas/energy/net energy] use was XX [therms/units/kWh]

Energy State

Primary Insight

Secondary Insight

Energy use decreased compared to last billing period

What could have caused your [gas/energy/net energy] use to decrease?

Changes in your household this period, like using less hot water than usual or fewer people at home, may have lowered your [gas/energy/net energy] use.

Comparing this bill period to a similar period last year, your [gas use/energy/net energy] use decreased XX [therms/units/kWh]

Energy use increased compared to last billing period

What could have caused your [gas/energy net energy] use to increase?

Changes in your household this period like using more hot water than usual or a long-term guest may have contributed.

Comparing this bill period to a similar period last year, your [gas/energy/ net energy] use increased XX [therms/units/kWh]

Energy use is similar to last billing period

How could you lower your [gas/energy use/net energy] use? Upgrade to water-efficient appliances. If your appliances use less water, you won’t be spending as much on water heating.

Comparing this bill period to a similar period last year, your [gas/energy/net energy] use was XX [therms/units/kWh]

Bi-Monthly or Quarterly Billing

If a customer has bi-monthly bills, the energy use bar will be plotted at the end of the two-month period. This results in fewer data points compared to monthly bills. The seasonal icons above the chart are replaced with an short explainer text, "We report energy use based on the end of your bimonthly bill period."

If a customer has quarterly bills, the energy use data bar will be plotted at the end of the three-month period. This results in fewer data points compared to monthly or bi-monthly bills. The seasonal icons above the chart are replaced with an short explainer text, "We report energy use based on the end of your quarterly bill period."

Available Data

If less than 13 months of data is available, the header changes to ‘Track your progress.’ If either a usage value from the last year or current year is missing, one bar is centered on top of the associated x-axis anchor. A message below the graph explains the possible reasons for the missing data, and asterisks are included in the legend to indicate the years that are missing data.

eHER v3 Personal Tracker missing bill

If the customer has more than 13 months of data, but a comparison with the previous year’s billing period is not possible because data from a similar billing period from last year is missing, the comparison is completed with the previous billing period value.

For example, if the energy usage value for 'Last September (2020)’ is missing, the comparison is made between energy usage for ‘This September (2021)’ and energy usage for August 2021. The primary insight emphases that the report is comparing these bill periods being compared because it was unable to locate a similar period of data from the year before. The secondary insight indicates that the customer's usage has increased or decreased in comparison to a previous period.

eHER v3 Personal Tracker variation for a customer who has more than thireteen months of data

The module fails if comparison with the last year’s similar billing period and previous bill period is not possible.