Rate Design Reimagined

GridX Design is a comprehensive tool for developing pricing strategies that incentivize customer behavior changes in pursuit of clean energy adoption and grid reliability goals, while ensuring rate designs lead to full revenue recovery. It enables users to leverage the full power of their customer and smart meter data to easily create rate and tariff structures – from those with basic requirements to the most advanced (present and future) and everything in between.

Rate design is the process utility companies use to set costs for the dependable supply of electricity and energy services. Rate design can impact consumption and investment choices across various energy solutions.

Systemic trends are forcing utilities to confront the need for new rate design.

As the use of more distributed energy resources (DERs) becomes more common, it’s exponentially important for electricity rates and utility costs to evolve in order to ensure people are receiving the correct rate options for their energy storage and consumption.

Smart rate design can take into account a customer’s distributed energy resources. For example, these may include electric vehicles (EVs), batteries, and rooftop solar photovoltaic systems. Customers who are able to use these renewable energy sources generate a portion of their own electricity and are able to supply excess power to the grid.

With an increase in distributed energy resources, companies need to be able to offer net metering options and implement new complex rate designs to better bill customers based on their energy usage and how they contribute to the overall grid.

Having the ability to bill customers equitably, and with the best data and analysis available, enables more customers to use greener energy and to give their surplus energy to the grid.

Utility analytic solutions provide insights into trends and patterns in energy use, identify areas where there are opportunities for improvement, and track progress over time. Not only can this analysis provide utilities with insights into customers personal usage.

Better data and analytics will help energy customers save money, reduce emissions, and improve the efficiency of their energy use. This eases some of the stress on the electrical grid and helps lower costs overall.

Smart meters are a digital system that makes it possible for utilities and their customers to track energy consumption more precisely.

Utilities as well as customers gain real-time information regarding their usage. This helps them monitor energy use and detect potential issues. Plus it eliminates the need for a utilities employee to visit in person to read the meter.

Advanced metering will help pave the way for a greener and more affordable energy future, helping all customer classes, including all classes of residential and commercial customers.

Typically, smart meters connect wirelessly. This allows the smart meters to be conveniently  and discreetly placed where they are needed.

Smart meters are designed to transmit data in bursts, rather than transmitting constantly.

How often these data bursts occur may be different depending on the smart meter. However, advanced meters typically transmit information every 15 minutes or so.

Smart appliances that can communicate with the home’s smart meter allow customers to track the electricity use of specific appliances.

These advanced utility meters can help customers increase their energy efficiency and save money by understanding when, why, and how their energy use is impacted.

Smart meters can communicate real-time data on energy usage directly to the electricity customer, homeowner, or utility provider.

This ease of communication helps companies analyze and understand data in order to improve functions for utility companies and their consumers.

Smart meters can send real-time information to the electric utility supplier, making it a better business model, creating a faster demand response time, and helping customers and companies better understand the cost causation of their choices.