Time-of-Use Exceptions and Conditional Billing

 

The on-going rollout of smart meters and the introduction of demand response programs provide an ideal environment for utility companies in an advanced metering infrastructure to improve their load balancing.

Contractually agreed participation of customers in demand reponse programs means that utility companies can use events to react quickly to potential load fluctuations. Special time-of-use rates, which take event-driven dynamic elements into account, offer customers financial incentives to reduce their consumption in critical peak times or to shift their consumption to less critical times. Dynamic elements in the rate model can be, for example, critical peak prices within Critical Peak Pricing (CPP) or Peak Time Rebates (PTR).

Features

With the processing of time-of-use exceptions and conditional billing, SAP IS-U supports utilities in using these advantages of an advanced metering infrastructure. Demand response programs are mapped in SAP IS-U as time-of-use exception programs; events that occur during demand response programs are referred to as time-of-use exceptions.

Time-of-use exceptions are the dynamic elements. They can occur at any time and are typically short in duration (< 1 day). Alternative or additional billing rules need to be applied for the duration of a time-of-use exception. This is done using conditional billing, which is an enhancement of SAP IS-U Billing. Conditional billing can also be used to bill critical peak prices during Critical Peak Pricing (CPP) or to clear peak-time rebates (PTR).

The following figure shows a normal time-of-use rate with time-of-use periods. The rate differentiates between on-peak and off-peak rates on weekdays and a normal rate on weekends and public holidays.

The colors of the time-of-use periods have the following meanings:

  • Orange blocks for off-peak rate periods (19:00 - 07:59 on weekdays)

  • Blue blocks for on-peak rate periods (08:00 - 18:59 on weekdays)

  • Green blocks for normal rate periods (all day on weekends and public holidays)

The consumption from each time-of-use period is aggregated and the quantities are valuated with different prices. This kind of rate model can be realized and billed in SAP IS-U using real-time pricing billing (RTP billing) or time-of-use billing (TOU billing).

For more information, see

Real-Time Pricing (RTP) Billing

Time-of-Use Billing

With time-of-use exception programs and the occurance of time-of-use exceptions, a dynamic element is added. The following figure shows the same time-of-use rate as above. However, two time-of-use exceptions occurred within the period.

The time-of-use exceptions are colored red and occur in the example on July 13 from 12:30 to 15:00 and on July 22nd from 11:45 to 14:30.

Conditional billing takes the time-of-use exceptions into account and uses a special conditional rate for these exception periods.

Prerequisites

The prerequisites for processing time-of-use exceptions and conditional billing are as follows:

  • Consumption data in the form of time series

  • The use of time-of-use rates or RTP rates with consideration of time-of-use exceptions and corresponding prices

Process

The following process overview shows the processing of time-of-use exceptions and conditional billing in the overall context. Conditional billing itself takes place in SAP IS-U. Some previous process steps are covered by other applications of the SAP for Utilities solution, or they run in external systems.

Note Note

The interfaces between the SAP system and the external systems are not all available as standard and have to be developed as part of the customer project.

End of the note.

Abbreviations:

  • DSM = Demand Side Management

  • EPM = Energy Portfolio Management

  • DRMS = Demand Response Management System

  • MDUS = Metered Data Unification & Synchronization

Process Overview Part 1: Participation in Time-of-Use Exception Programs and Registration of Customers
  1. The customer participates in a time-of-use exception program (SAP DSM).

  2. The participation is noted in the customer's utility contract (using the product change in SAP CRM for Utilities, for example).

  3. The participation is noted in the customer's rate data. This means that the TOU exception program is taken into account during contract billing in SAP IS-U (for example, using contract replication from SAP CRM for Utilities to SAP IS-U under allocation of suitable rate data to the utility installation).

  4. Other external systems (such as Demand Response Management systems - DRMS) are informed by the customer registration.

Process Overview Part 2: Activation of Time-of-Use Exceptions for Time-of-Use Exception Programs
  1. Certain events require activation of a TOU exception program. These events could be forecasted extreme weather situations or technical problems such as power outages, which result in high consumption peaks.

  2. Optimization processes in external systems (DRMS) evaluate a suitable timeframe for a time-of-use exception and select a TOU exception program as well as customers to participate in the TOU exception.

  3. Customers, smart meters, and relevant IT systems are informed of the timeframe of the planned TOU exception by the external system.

  4. Customers or smart meters provide a response regarding participation in the TOU exception; TOU exception responses are exchanged and logged.

  5. TOU exception data and TOU exception response data is stored in SAP IS-U.

  6. If the profile values are stored in the SAP system (and not in the MDUS system), the consumption data is uploaded to SAP IS-U/EDM and saved.

Process Overview Part 3: Conditional Billing

Consumption billing takes place taking TOU exceptions into account (conditional billing).