Neighbor Comparison
The Neighbor Comparison compares the customer (“You”) to two groups: “Efficient Neighbors” and “All Neighbors.” The results are displayed in a horizontal bar graph, and a message explains how the customer compares to their efficient neighbors. The customer can fall into one of three states: "Great,” "Good,” or “Using more than average". "Efficient Neighbors" are defined as the most efficient 20% of the customer's neighbors. An informational section below the bar graph provides details about the comparison.
On this page:
Requirements
Utility Requirements
| Required Cloud Service | Same as listed in the product-wide requirements. |
| Scale | No applicable scale requirements. |
Customer Requirements
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Billing Frequency |
Monthly, bi-monthly, or quarterly. |
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Data Delivery Frequency |
Monthly, bi-monthly, or quarterly. |
| Data Requirements |
Billing data is required. Additionally, some third-party data (geospatial data and parcel data, for example) is required to select other similar neighbors or households for the comparison. The feature will not display if it is unable to select the minimum number of neighbors. The minimum threshold may vary depending on your utility's setup and configuration. Contact your Delivery Team if you have any questions. |
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Data History |
A single bill from the last bill period or previous to last bill period. |
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Data Coverage |
Not applicable. Data at the bill level is used. |
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Supported Fuels |
Electricity, gas, and dual fuel. |
Limitations
- Web Versus Printed Reports: The neighbor comparison on the web may be slightly different than the neighbor comparison in printed Home Energy Reports (HERs). Note, however, that both report types depend on the same set of neighbors selected for a customer.
- Dynamic Calculations: A new set of neighbors is not dynamically calculated whenever a customer signs in to their web account and views the neighbor comparison. This is because the neighbor selection algorithm is an intensive matching process that takes a non-trivial amount of time to run, and so the web version of the feature would take a very long time to load. This also means that if customers update their home information on the web (for example, by using the Home Energy Analysis survey), they will not see an updated neighbor comparison until Oracle Utilities systems are able to run neighbor re-selection processes at a time later.
- Dual Fuel: Dual fuel customers see a combined "Energy" view as the default view in the neighbor comparison. If a customer has no gas data, but is part of a dual fuel utility, the customer will still see a neighbor comparison for electricity (and vice versa). Additionally, note that for dual fuel customers, the neighbor selection process selects neighbors based on all the home characteristics, but performs a comparison for each fuel independently. The gas values are calculated based on the gas bill periods, not the electric bill periods (and vice versa).
- Customers with Electric Vehicles or Heat Pumps: The neighbor comparison will not be impacted if custom survey questions about electric vehicles (EVs) or heat pumps are added to the Home Energy Analysis. In other words, customers who have these attributes will not be compared to other customers who have these attributes, because the data on these attributes is not widely available. Even if these specific questions were added as new rules in the neighbor selection process, most customers would end up matching with neighbors based on standard information about a premise (such as square footage), unless a very high number of people completed the Home Energy Analysis survey and provided enough data to affect the selection.
User Experience
The user experience described in this section is for customers who have a desktop screen, a single fuel (electricity), and "neighbor" terminology as opposed to "similar homes" terminology.
Insight Statement: The insight statement above the chart ("You used x% more [fuelType] than your neighbors") provides information about why the bar chart appears the way it does. Specifically, it displays a percentage for how much more or less the customer used compared to their "efficient neighbors", or how much more or less the customer used compared to "all neighbors" (including efficient neighbors).
How You're Doing Icon: This icon highlights whether the customer is doing "Great," "Good," or "Using more than average." The icon represents a summary of the different states of the normative message. There are different states for the icon, including a different icon and text for when the customer is using more than their neighbors.
See Energy Details: A link is provided to take customers to the Data Browser to explore their historical energy costs.
Bar Chart: The bar chart displays how much energy each group in the comparison used. The order of the bars should be: the bar with the smallest value on top and the bar with the largest value on the bottom.
- You: This bar indicates how the customer is doing. This is often a color that corresponds to the utility brand color.
- Average Neighbors: This bar indicates how all the customer's neighbors are doing. It is usually a gray or neutral color.
- Efficient Neighbors: This bar displays a usage value for the most efficient 20% of the customer's neighbors. It is usually colored green because green is commonly associated with energy efficiency. Note that the efficient neighbors value that appears in the module is not an average of the top 20% of neighbors. A threshold value—the 20th percentile neighbor—is used to determine the efficient neighbors value.
Date Range: The date range displays the time period that is covered by the comparison. The comparison always covers the last completed billing period. The year accompanies both the start date and end date (for example, Dec 20, 2019 – Jan 20, 2020).
Who Are My Neighbors: When clicked, information about the characteristics that match between the customer's home and the homes they are being compared to is displayed. This information may include:
- Number of homes in the comparison
- Average distance of neighbors
- Average square feet of neighbors
- Percentage of neighbors with the same home type
- Average number of occupants
- Percentage of neighbors with the same heat type