Provisioning Your Customers Account

First set their location, utility, and tariff rate plan:

• Create an Account - dives into the details of how to create and populate an Account (a.k.a. Site)
• Select the Right Utility and Tariff - selecting the right utility and tariff for accounts and calculations
• Handle Baseline Regions - which tariffs have rates that vary by location within their service area (common in California), and how to handle them.

Then baseline how much electricity they are using:

• Use a bill to estimate consumption - estimating a customer’s annual energy usage from a single bill based on the cost
• Load Time-of-use (TOU) readings into a Profile or Calculation - uploading a customer’s usage profile or running a calculation with TOU reading data
• Forecast a year's energy usage with just one bill using Use Intelligent Baselining - intelligent baselining (IB) is a way to take some usage data, such as a consumption number from a bill, and a) extrapolate it out to a full year, b) interpolate it into hours and c) project it to a different time period. Read this article to get a better understanding of IB.
• Upload Common File Formats - uploading a customer’s usage profile in various common file formats

Some techniques for specific markets and more accurate results:

• Handle Taxes - passing tax rates in a calculation request and setting tax rates on an account
• Contracted Rates in Deregulated Markets - for deregulated markets, micro-grids, what-if contracts, and more, here’s how to use contracted rates. We include some detailed examples of how to model Block and Index contracts.
• User Adjusted Rates - add one or more of your own rates to any calculation.