Billing Determinants Calculation

What it does

A billing system does not want raw meter data; it wants the determinants of an invoice: the consumption of the period, split by tariff period where a time-of-use contract applies, the peak demand, and the register reads at the period end. Billing Determinants Calculation produces exactly that from the validated VEE data, on request from the billing system or on your own schedule, fills the gaps that would otherwise block an invoice, and answers with a message the billing system can process. Behaviour specific to your market or organisation, such as tariff structures, proration rules and message formats, is layered on top through configuration.

How it works

1. Receive the request. A billing request (IEC 61968-9 GetMeterReadings) names the metering points, the period and the determinants wanted: the total, a day and night or a peak and off-peak split, the peak demand (Pmax), the register reads, optionally split by calendar month. A request can be sent by the billing system or generated inside the platform from a billing schedule and datasource tags.
2. Load the data. The VEE data of the requested channels is loaded for the period.
3. Complete the data. Missing interval reads are estimated with the same methods as VEE, interpolation for short gaps and similar days for longer ones. Missing register reads are derived from the first register read of the period and the interval reads in between, and a missing monthly peak-demand read is taken from the measured interval peak of that month. Every estimate is marked as such.
4. Validate. The period is billed only if every requested channel has data and every read is measured or estimated. Otherwise the calculation stops with a clear reason, and the failure shows on the dashboard.
5. Calculate the determinants. Interval data is summed per period and, for a time-of-use tariff, per tariff period of the metering point's tariff; the tariff definition (timeslice group) handles weekdays, weekends, public holidays and the daylight-saving transitions. The peak demand is the highest value per month, and a register determinant is the read at the period end. Each determinant carries the lowest quality status of the data it was built from and, if that data was estimated, the estimation method.
6. Store and respond. The determinants are stored on dedicated billing channels of the metering point, so they can be audited later, and the results of all metering points in a request are collected into one billing response, published to the billing system's messaging topic and kept in the File Manager.

What you see

• The Billing dashboard: the number of successful billing calculations, the number of failing ones, and the list of failed calculations for today.
• The billing channels (total, day, night, peak, off-peak, register and Pmax) on each metering point in the datasource view, with the period each determinant covers.

What you can configure

• Tariffs: one time-of-use definition per tariff name. A day and night tariff ships with the package (day from 07:00 to 23:00 on weekdays, night otherwise, including weekends and public holidays); other tariffs are added as timeslice groups and referenced from the customer agreement of the metering point.
• The public holiday calendar per metering point.
• Whether determinants are calculated per calendar month or over the whole period.
• Which gaps may be estimated, or whether only measured data may be billed.
• Whether an estimated register read may serve as the base for deriving missing register reads.
• The messaging topic of the billing system, and the response format through the forwarding flow.

Verified behaviour

The package ships with automated acceptance scenarios that run against a live environment. Among others, they cover:

• a period without data and a period with a read of bad quality being rejected with a reason;
• one metering point, one period, total consumption;
• several metering points with different periods in one request;
• a period that spans the switch from winter to summer time;
• gaps, missing register reads and a missing peak-demand read being estimated before billing;
• time-of-use billing with the shipped day and night tariff;
• determinants split by calendar month.

Standard rules in this module

Rule	What it does
Standard Load Data Preparation	Loads the requested channels for the billing period.
Standard Gap Check Validation, Standard Linear Interpolation Estimation, Standard Average Of Similar Days Estimation	Find and estimate the missing interval reads of the period in place, shared with VEE.
Standard Register Estimation	Estimates the register reads missing from the period from a measured read and the interval reads in between.
Standard Pmax Estimation	Fills in a missing monthly peak-demand read from the measured interval peak of that month.
Standard Billing Validation	Stops the calculation when a channel has no data or a read has a bad quality status.
Standard Billing Determinants Calculation	Calculates the requested determinants and stores them on the billing channels.
Standard Billing Collective Trigger Forwarding, Standard Billing Message Creation	Collect the results of all metering points of one request into one response message, through the collective trigger.
Standard Save JSON Forwarding, Standard Send Pubsub Forwarding	Keep the response in the File Manager and publish it to the billing system's messaging topic.

Extending the module

• Add market-specific determinants and proration rules as your own calculation rules.
• Trigger billing from your own schedules, for example per customer group or billing cycle.
• Deliver the response in the format of your billing system through your own forwarding rule.

Installation and updates: standard-packages.