Billing of estimates in an outage

In order to be sensitive to even the perception of end use customers being billed with estimated readings during a period of time where the given customer experienced a power outage, IEE offers the ability to monitor interval readings at the end of a bill cycle.

While it is possible that estimates over power outages can be used in ABE calculations, through the use of Gap Fill Interrogation (GFI) and the Stale Data Detection Process (SDDP) there is a concern that if the outage data is received by IEE at the end of the bill cycle, there will not be enough time for these processes to fully complete.

With the Estimate Billing in an Outage feature, you have the ability to identify a risk window at the end of the bill cycle and configure a threshold percentage of Gap/Estimate data within that risk window. IEE calculates the percentage of Gap and Estimate data within that risk window, and if the percentage exceeds the threshold, it creates a data quality exception that is displayed to the operator on the AMI billing export queue monitoring screen.

Configure this feature using the following settings under System Administration > AMI Billing System Settings:

  • ClosedOutage Risk Window (hrs.)

    Defines the beginning of the risk window, which is a specified number of hours from the end of the billing period. The risk window is considered the amount of time at the end of the billing period where the Gap Fill Interrogation process may not have enough time to fill a gap. During this period, the rate engine gathers a data quality statistic (Gap Est) related to intervals with both ESTIMATED and GAP status. If this setting is set to null, no risk window is defined and no statistic is compiled.

  • ClosedGap and Estimate Limit %

    Defines the maximum allowable percentage of intervals that can have both ESTIMATED and GAP status without raising an error.

The attribute name IDs for these settings are stored in the External system attribute name table. Set the values for these settings from the AMI billing system settings user interface.