Designing Measurement Cycles, Routes, And Schedules
Designing Measurement Cycles for Meter Reading
The criterion that affects the number of measurement cycles has nothing to do with when meter readers physically read your meter devices. Rather, the frequency that you bill the meter's consumption (real or estimated) is what controls the number of measurement cycles.
So, for example, if you bill every month, but read every OTHER month, you'll have 20 measurement cycles - one for each bill day during the month. If you bill bimonthly, you'll have 40 measurement cycles. If you bill quarterly, you'll have 60 measurement cycles. Etc.
Different billing frequencies are possible for different service points. If you have different billing frequencies for your different types of metered service, you'll need a different set of cycles for each billing frequency. For example, if you bill water quarterly and electricity monthly, you'll have 20 bill cycles (one for each bill day during a month), but you'd need 60 quarterly measurement cycles for your water service points, and 20 monthly measurement cycles for your electric service points. This would result in a customer getting billed every month. However, four times a year, their bill would contain a charge for both electricity and water.
Designing Service Routes For Meter Reading
The following points describe the relationship between a meter read, a route and a measurement cycle:
- A measurement cycle contains one or more routes.
- A route has one or more service points.
- A service point holds an installed meter device.
- And a device is what is measured.
- Therefore, the number of devices a person can read in a day limits the number of service points in a route.
If your company supplies electric service and uses MV90's, you will need to take advantage of "notional" routes. A "notional" route's service points are never actually read by a human. Rather, the service points' consumption is fed to the system by a sophisticated device (e.g., an MV90). These service points still need to be linked to a route because usage calculation is dependent on the route's cycle to determine the expected meter read date.
Designing Metered Measurement Cycle Schedules
The process of designing your measurement cycle schedules is either easy or complicated. It will be easy if all routes within a cycle are downloaded when the measurement cycle is scheduled for download. It will be complicated if you download a subset of routes within a cycle on any given download date. We'll provide a few examples to help explain why.
If you download all cycles in a route whenever the cycle is downloaded, your measurement cycle schedule will look as follows.
Bill cycles. We've included each measurement cycle's related bill cycle to help you understand when the measurement cycle's consumption will be billed. Bill cycles are discussed in Bill Cycles.
|
Measurement Cycle |
Download Date |
Expected Work Date |
Which Routes To Download |
Bill Cycle |
Bill Window |
Estimation Date |
|
|
1 |
28-May-99 |
31-May-99 |
All |
1 |
31-May-99 to 2-Jun-99 |
2-Jun-99 |
|
|
2 |
31-May-99 |
1-Jun-99 |
All |
2 |
1-Jun-99 to 3-Jun-99 |
3-Jun-99 |
|
|
3 |
1-Jun-99 |
2-Jun-99 |
All |
3 |
2-Jun-99 to 4-Jun-99 |
4-Jun-99 |
|
|
4 |
2-Jun-99 |
3-Jun-99 |
All |
4 |
3-Jun-99 to 7-Jun-99 |
7-Jun-99 |
|
|
Etc. to 20 |
Now let's complicate life. If we assume you physically read your routes every other month (but bill monthly using estimated consumption), then you'll need the following measurement cycle schedule.
|
Measurement Cycle |
Download Date |
Expected Work Date |
Which Routes |
Bill Cycle |
Bill Window |
Estimation Date |
|
|
1 |
30-May-99 |
31-May-99 |
1, 2, 3 - Download 4, 5, 6 - Estimate |
1 |
31-May-99 to 2-Jun-99 |
2-Jun-99 |
|
|
2 |
31-May-99 |
1-Jun-99 |
1, 2, 3 - Download 4, 5, 6 - Estimate |
2 |
1-Jun-99 to 3-Jun-99 |
3-Jun-99 |
|
|
3 |
1-Jun-99 |
2-Jun-99 |
1, 2, 3 - Download 4, 5, 6 - Estimate |
3 |
2-Jun-99 to 4-Jun-99 |
4-Jun-99 |
|
|
4 |
2-Jun-99 |
3-Jun-99 |
1, 2, 3 - Download 4, 5, 6 - Estimate |
4 |
3-Jun-99 to 7-Jun-99 |
7-Jun-99 |
|
|
Etc. to 20 |
|||||||
|
1 |
29-Jun-99 |
30-Jun-99 |
1, 2, 3 - Estimate 4, 5, 6 - Download |
1 |
30-Jun-99 to 2-Jul-99 |
2-July-99 |
|
|
2 |
30-Jun-99 |
1-July-99 |
1, 2, 3 - Estimate 4, 5, 6 - Download |
2 |
1-July-99 to 3-Jul-99 |
3-July-99 |
|
|
3 |
1-July-99 |
2-July-99 |
1, 2, 3 - Estimate 4, 5, 6 - Download |
3 |
2-July-99 to 4-July-99 |
4-July-99 |
|
|
4 |
2-July-99 |
3-July-99 |
1, 2, 3 - Estimate 4, 5, 6 - Download |
4 |
3-July-99 to 7-July-99 |
7-July-99 |
|
|
Etc. to 20 |
Notice the following:
- You still have 20 measurement cycles even though you only read the meters every other month. Why? Because Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management uses the expected work date on the measurement cycle to know when to look for a measurement. If it can't find a reading on this date, Meter Data Management estimates consumption. Without a measurement cycle schedule, Meter Data Management wouldn't know when to look for readings.
- Every other month you download half the routes in each cycle and estimate consumption for the other half.
- If you don't download all routes when a measurement cycle is scheduled, you have to indicate how to handle every route in the cycle.
The above design is infinitely flexible. You can use it to handle any number of requirements:
- Estimate consumption every seventh month.
- Bill every month, but only read once a quarter.
- Etc.