Rates Modeling

Rates modeling is the process by which Oracle Utilities configures the Rate Engine to consume rates data from utilities and calculate personalized cost insights for customers. Rates modeling is required at an additional fee when setting up the Rates Engagement cloud service.

Note: The Oracle Utilities Opower rates modeling process is carried out for residential utility customers only, and not for commercial customers.

Your Delivery Team will work closely with you to complete the rate modeling process. The high-level steps include:

  1. Identify which rate plans need to be modeled and acquire the appropriate documentation. Often, such documentation includes a rate tariff document describing the terms and conditions of a utility's rate plan, as well as examples of bills and usage charges.
  2. Determine what data is currently being sent in the usage_charge field in the Legacy Billing Data File. This lets Oracle Utilities know which costs to model in the Rate Engine. For example, if taxes are included in the data for that field, then taxes should be modeled in the Rate Engine. If taxes are not included in that field, then they should not be modeled.
  3. Analyze the rate plan documentation to understand how a utility's rates are calculated. Tasks in this step may include:
    • Conduct meetings as needed with rates subject matter experts at the utility to verify how the rate plans work
    • Identify what rates data needs to be imported into the Oracle Utilities Opower data platform.
    • Determine whether existing rate calculators in the Oracle Utilities Opower Rate Engine can be used to calculate the rates, or if a new custom rate calculator needs to be developed. A "rate calculator" is a piece of code that generates cost information. While there is a set of generic rate calculators in the Rate Engine that can be configured to support different rate plans, sometimes a new calculator must be created to support a utility's unique situation. The Rate Engine has calculators for common scenarios such as tiered rate plans, time-of-use rate plans, and flat charges.
  4. Send the Oracle Utilities Opower Rates Data Transfer documentation to the utility to begin establishing a regular feed of rates data.
  5. Import rates data from the utility and test that cost insights are being calculated and displayed in the relevant web features as expected.

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