Key Concepts
Learn how data is structure, how to find the data you need, and handle edge cases.
Get to know the Arc Data Model before you start using the Dashboard or API
This guide will provide a high level orientation for how data obtained from utility bills is structured. Familiarizing yourself with the Data Model before getting started with the Plug Statements product can help you fine the data most relevant to your use case faster.
Entities in the Data Model
| Entity | Description |
|---|---|
| Provider | An entity that provides a commodity to a market as a service. Often referred to as a "utility" in some contexts. See Service Types Guide for a list of commodities that Arcadia supports. |
| Account | A way to track and manage the usage of various utility services provided to a residential or commercial property. Utility accounts are mostly for billing purposes, as they allow the provider to bill customers for the services they have consumed in a billing period. |
| Credentials | The set of information (often, but not always and not limited to, username/email and password) used to access an online Account on a Provider’s website or data portal. You can use a correlationId to annotate Credentials with an identifier that helps you to correlate it with records in your system. |
| Statement | The processed, standardized, machine-readable entry within the platform that represents the content of a bill issued by a Provider according to Arcadia's data model. |
| Meter | A meter in Arcadia's data model can be either: - A physical monitoring device located at the point of commodity consumption that reports consumption in regular intervals for the provider to calculate charges. - A proxy by Arcadia to represent consumption at the most granular level with the data model. |
| Site | A concept in Arcadia's data model to enable grouping meters by a location or another logical grouping for your system. Using this concept is optional. |
| Tariff | The set of rules Providers use to calculate and distribute charges for commodities with measured, estimated, and billed usages. A meter can only have one tariff at any given time. Even though the tariff of a meter can change over time, at any given time, it can only have one tariff. |
Provider Classifications
"Provider Classifications" are designations determined by the provider. Whether a Provider is a Publisher or Pass-Through provider depends on the Account in the context of a particular bill. All statements will have an account that is from a PUBLISHER provider. Not all statements will have an account that is from a PASS_THROUGH provider.
When a PASS_THROUGH provider is present, additional accountData and meterData objects will be created in the data model to account for these items independently. To ensure that you are accounting for total usages and total charges accurately, do not ignore these additional accountData and meterData objects which may seem as duplicative. Whether they are indeed duplicative depends on the context of the bill.
| Entity | Description |
|---|---|
| Publisher | A utility in a deregulated, open-competition, market that serves as the statement publisher (i.e. issuer) of the bill. |
| Pass-Through | A utility in a deregulated, open-competition, market that serves as a pass-thru utility mentioned within a statement published by another utility (i.e. the Publisher Provider). |
Account Types
"Account Types" is a designation determined by Arcadia. The type of the account is inferred by Arcadia based on what information is available on the bill. When we see a summary account number present on the bill, we infer that the account is a SUMMARY account type. SUMMARY and SUB_ACCOUNT types typically only exist for commercial accounts. When an account is not a SUMMARY or SUB_ACCOUNT, it is a NORMAL account.
| Entity | Description |
|---|---|
| Normal | The most common subtype of an Account. It is a single Account that has no sub-accounts. This is not a provider-determined account type. |
| Summary Account | A sub-type of Account which is used to tally up all the charges across all the Sub-accounts owned by the same Account holder. |
| Sub-Account | A sub-type of Account that has a main tracking account (i.e. a Summary Account). |
Updated 3 months ago