Wholesale and Transmission billing for SAP Utilities

[kathy_rubens]

Utilities that purchase electricity from the wholesale market or transmit bulk energy across high-voltage power lines from power plants to substations have unique billing and settlement requirements.  There’s no need for an external billing solution.  All the requirements can be met in SAP, using Energy Data Management (EDM) with one or more of the following: RTP interfaces in IS-U billing engine, Calculation Workbench, Settlement Workbench.

EDM:

Interval reads are stored in profiles that are allocated to registers (channels) on a meter or device information record (DIR).  Configurable role(s) are allocated to the profile.  The roles are used to identify how the values will be used in a formula (calculation).  The formula may be used in an RTP interface, the Calculation Workbench, or the Settlement Workbench.

EDM Calculation Workbench:

Often, one of the most daunting requirements in this type of complex billing, is the aggregation (and/or totalizations) of interval meters contributing to Summary Map, Wholesale Delivery Points, Transmission Connection points, or Transmission Delivery points.  SAP Energy Data Management (EDM) can perform the same formula calculations that other Meter Data Management Systems (MDMs), like MV90 or Lodestar can.

Complicated meter aggregations should be done prior to billing.  This allows an agent to resolve issues, like missing intervals before billing.  EDM’s Calculation Workbench and Installation groups can be used to perform the aggregations, or if the aggregations are already being performed in an external system, like MV90, the totalized profiles can be loaded into SAP.

Here are a few formula examples that can be performed at intervals of 5-min, 15-min, 30-min, 60-min, or daily:

• Subtract generation from consumption


• Apply loss adjustments


• Aggregate all meter intervals, with or without a load offset, for a Delivery Point (ex: substation, point of intersection, etc.)


• Aggregate multiple Delivery Points

 

EDM Settlement Workbench:

Occasionally, there will be a requirement to calculate a load profile using values from most or all of the interval meters.  The EDM Settlement Workbench is ideal for this.

For example:

• A load profile for un-metered Street Lights can be generated from a synthetic profile using the total monthly consumption.


• A Net System Load Shape for non-interval meters can be generated, using the total energy consumed in the utility grid and subtracting the known quantities.

Sample Net System Load Shape Calculation:

IS-U Billing Engine and RTP (Real Time Price) Interfaces:

The IS-U Billing engine is used to calculate all Network, Connection, and/or Billing charges. (Proxy charges can be calculated using non-posting relevant settings in the billing Schema.)  This is the same IS-U billing engine, used for mass market billing.  Skill sets of existing support staff can be leveraged for Complex, Transmission or Wholesale billing.

 

IS-U Billing Rates use RTP interface(s) for interval calculations.  The RTP interface includes a formula that defines the calculation(s).  Roles assigned to the profiles are used as input parameters to the formula.  RTP interfaces can be used to calculate values, such as:

• kVA from kWh and kVARh


• Coincident Peak demand


• Narrow Peak demand


• Daily average demand


• Power Factors


• Load Factors


• Time-of-Use (TOU)


• Hour offsets


• Quantities above/below a threshold


• Events, such as outages, maintenance periods, etc.

[Patrick_Gans]

Thanks, Kathy, for this information! It's helpful to see how standard EDM functionality can be used in ways that many may not think is possible. Appreciate it!