Usage Profiles

A usage profile organizes together one or more series of usage data. This data can include electricity consumption (kWh) or demand (kW). It can take the form of bills or meter readings and can be for electricity purchased from the utility or on-site solar energy. They can also take into account usage reduction through energy efficiency. Profiles belong to an Account object and it is typical, although not required, to have at least one profile per account.

The data structure of a Profile object consists of a "header" that denotes key information about it such as its unique profileId (that Arcadia generates) or your unique providerProfileId, its name, serviceType, and other properties. It also has a summary of its usage info, as well the inputted data points themselves. The data inputs can come in two flavors: bills and readings. Readings are most commonly from electricity metering and likely will be in uniform durations. They can however record values at irregular intervals, such as billing cycles or when measurements don't occur at regular times. A reading can be for a given interval or as of a particular point in time.

Profiles also have a ReadingSummary object for each series that denotes the number of readings for that series. The summary also contains the date and time range for the series and other useful data points.

There are a number of different ways you can add (or edit) reading data to a profile. The different methods available are intended for use in different scenarios:

• Real Time Interval API - use this approach when adding one or a small number of intervals. This is optimized for real time feeds such as sending us updates every 15 minutes or hour.
• Reading API - use this approach when programmatically sending number of irregular readings. This is designed for data that does not fit into intervals.
• Bulk Loading via File Upload - ideal for batch uploading of several (hundreds or thousands) of intervals or readings. This approach is essentially a CSV file upload.