Weather Insights
The Weather Insight module educates customers on how changes in temperature can affect their energy use. It also provides a comparison between the current month's average temperature and the average temperature from the same month of the previous year.
On this page:
Requirements
Same as listed in the product-wide requirements. Additionally, the following interval weather conditions must be met in order for the weather insight to appear in the alert:
- The weather data interval for the current bill period or previous bill period is available.
- The weather data interval for the current season and previous season match for at least seven days.
- The weather data interval is less than the number of days for which weather data is available with respect to latency (2 days and 4 hours).
Limitations
Same as listed in the product-wide limitations.
User Experience
This section describes the common user experience with the module.
Heading: The heading tells the user how the weather might have impacted their energy use, and can include a graphic showing a sun for warmer weather and a snowflake for cooler weather. For example, "Warmer weather may have affected your energy use".
Subheading: The subheading provides further explanation about why the weather might have impacted the customer's bill. For example, "Energy use tends to be higher on warmer days."
Temperature Insight: The temperature insight gives customers additional information about how weather during the current period compares to the same time last year. For example, "On average, this month was 7˚F hotter than the same time last year."
User Experience Variations
This module can vary depending on how the temperature in the current period compares to the temperature in the comparison period from the previous year.
The weather insights calculation determines whether the average temperature was higher or lower between the current period and the comparison period. The calculator generates a weather insight that describes how weather might have impacted the bill's charges, and can result in the use of one of these states:
- Cooler
- Warmer
- Neutral
This sections below describe how weather information is calculated to determine the module state.
Weather Data Collection
Weather information is collected for the following intervals:
- Current billing period: An uncompleted bill interval. The bill interval end date can be shifted up to 2 days and 4 hours due to a weather service latency (4 hours).
- Last year's billing period: 1 year shifted from the current billing period.
- Current season period: Last 30 days interval.
- Last year's season period: 1 year shifted from the current season period.
We classify each of the above periods into seasons: Heating, Cooling or Transition. The classification is made using average mean temperature.
Determine Whether Seasons are Comparable
Once the season classifications are calculated, we determine if the seasons are comparable. A comparable season is defined by two periods being either the same season or one period being defined as Transition.
To be comparable the following checks are made:
- current billing period and current season period (for example both must be "Heating", or both must be "Cooling", or one could be "Transition")
- current billing period and previous billing period
- current season period and previous season period
If one or more of the checks return a negative result, the seasons are not considered comparable. In this case, the module will not render in the communication.
Identifying the Weather Insight States
If the seasons are determined to be comparable, then the weather insight states are determined by the season classification and temperature difference calculations listed here:
- Warmer: If current billing period is classified as Cooling, the mean temperature difference between current bill period and previous bill period is positive, and the mean temperature difference is greater than 8˚F.