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Finally - Bottom Line Information with just a few mouse clicks.
Electric hourly load profiles and profitability can now easily
be evaluated for any commercial or residential customer or customer segment
anywhere in the country by selecting virtually any combination of customer
characteristics, any state or any of
373 metropolitan areas with the
MAISY Customer and Market Profiler.
Over a year in development, the Profiler was designed to provide a "wizard"
approach to answering difficult profitability questions. Selection, processing
and weighting hundreds of variables and thousands of records is now
automated. (The standard MAISY chart-based drill-down process is still
available as part of the MAISY software for clients who apply the data in
their own custom procedures).
Significant variation in cost-of-service and profit occurs across individual
customers because of diversity in hourly load profiles and hourly variation
in the supply price of electricity. The MAISY Customer and Market Profiler
System applies an on-the-fly analysis of hourly load data from a database
of 156,000 customers to help electricity providers determine the profitability
of serving residential and commercial customers and groups of customers.
The new system provides hourly energy, revenue, cost, rate, weather and profit
analysis for customers or groups of customers for whom hourly load data are
not normally available.
The Profiler integrates MAISY energy marketing and hourly loads databases
in a comprehensive profitability analysis system that automatically extracts
and analyzes the most important information required to develop strategies
and to make marketing and pricing decisions.
Profitability analysis is typically a time-consuming and complicated evaluation.
Matching detailed market segment definitions or individual customer
characteristic to the appropriate database subset, weighting and processing
hourly loads from the selected database records and applying cost-of-service
and rate structures to the resulting hourly data require considerable staff
time and expertise.
The new Customer and Market Profiler simplifies and automates all of these
steps. The Profiler uses twelve sequential screens to help the user define
the desired market segment or customer specifications. The Profiler then
automatically extracts and processes relevant customer data from the energy
marketing and hourly loads databases and processes cost-of-service and rate
information. Analysis results are presented in both summary and detailed
charts and tables suitable for printing or exporting to other software. The
profiler provides information on national, state and metropolitan customers,
customer segments and markets.
Target marketing, strategic pricing, customer price bids and many other
rate/cost-of service issues can be addressed in a fraction of the time required
by traditional methods.
The Profiler software is written in Visual Basic and C++ and provides analysis
output results in Excel workbooks. The Excel workbook format was selected
to provide ease of access and maximum user flexibility in evaluation and
analysis activities.
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Guides market segment/customer selection with a series of twelve user-friendly
"wizard-type" forms
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Provides results in familiar Excel workbook format - no complicated software
to learn
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Saves time and staff costs with automation of hourly load data processing
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Integrates hourly load data, cost-of-service and electric rates in a
comprehensive profitability analysis
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Provides immediate insight on energy use, hourly loads and profitability
Profiler software guides market segment/customer selection with a series
of twelve user-friendly forms. For example, the two images below show location
and commercial business type selection forms.
Since location and customer type are the only required market segment/customer
selections, the specifications above are all that is required to conduct
hourly load and profitability analysis of grocery stores in Amarillo, Texas.
Optionally, several additional forms like the one shown below can be used
to specify more detailed customer characterizations.
As indicated in the screen above, users can specify numeric entries for any
of the customer characteristics or select from broad categories.
A Summary of Profiler Customer
Characteristics Selections details selection categories for both residential
and commercial customers.
The standard MAISY chart-based drill-down process may also be used to define
market segment/customer criteria with any combination of the hundreds of
MAISY customer variables.
The Profiler software next extracts and processes relevant customer data
from the energy marketing and hourly loads databases and combines
cost-of-service, electric and rate and hourly load profiles in a Profiler
Excel Workbook as illustrated below.
This main worksheet of the Profiler Workbook presents hourly load profiles
along with summary energy use, revenue and cost-of-service. By clicking on
the month radio buttons, users can quickly evaluate load profiles over the
entire year.
This ability to quickly tab through monthly graphical presentations of hourly
loads and profits intuitively explains profit variations as a function of
hourly loads, rates and cost of service.
The default thirty-year weather data provided as part of the Profiler database
may be replaced with user values for monthly heating and cooling degree days.
Hourly loads analysis may also be completed without specifying electric rates
or cost-of-service.
The Profiler also presents hourly load data in full-sized chart and tabular
presentations in other Profiler Windows. Hourly load data can be exported
from the Profiler in text, CSV and other common export formats.
Two different kinds of analysis can be performed with the Profiler:
Customer - Focused Analysis provides results for an individual customer
or for an average customer from user-selected market segments depending on
the analysis application. User-selected market segments can range from the
entire market to highly detailed market subsets. Geographic location may
be the entire US, states or metropolitan areas. The tables and charts presented
above were developed as part of a customer analysis.
Total Market Analysis provides total customer counts, total energy
and hourly load profiles for all customers within a user-selected state market
segment. Output results include all of the energy and hourly load tables
and charts provided in the customer analysis and also include data on number
of customers within the market segment.
For instance customer-focused analysis can be applied to evaluate hourly
loads and profitability of a average office building in Pennsylvania while
market analysis can be applied to determine the total number of office customers
in the state along with their total electricity use and load profile.
Three input elements are critical in profitability analysis:
Market segment or customer characteristics are selected with entries on a
series of sequential forms as illustrated in a previous section. The Profiler
automatically extracts, weights and processes relevant customer data from
the energy marketing and hourly loads databases to generate the appropriate
market segment or customer hourly load profiles. User may specify
heating and cooling degree days other than the thirty-year weather data included
in the Profiler database.
Cost-of-service schedules are specified by the user in the Profiler
Excel Workbook Cost-of-Service Worksheet and are automatically processed
by the Profiler to determine the cost of providing electric service to the
market segment or customer represented by the load profiles. Cost of service
may include generation cost, capacity costs and other fixed costs as desired.
Alternative specifications can easily be explored with results provided by
the Profiler. Jackson Associates (JA) can develop client-specific cost-of-service
data based on utility or market-area generating cost along with capacity
and fixed-cost allocations.
Detail in the Cost-of-Service Worksheet corresponds to the three daytypes
and twelve month detail of the hourly load profiles as shown below. Users
can input alternative cost-of-service data directly in the worksheet or import
data from other sources
Electric rate structures are specified by users in the Profiler Excel
Workbook Rates Worksheet. A variety of typical rate structures may be selected
in the Rates Worksheet; however, users can easily specify any rate structure
desired (JA telephone support can be used to help in specifications of
complicated rate structures). A simple rate structure is shown below.
Outputs - Reports and Charts
Hourly loads, cost-of-service, revenue and profit are provided in separate
tabular and chart form for each of the twelve months and three day types
in a form suitable for printing or transporting to other Windows software.
Summary monthly kWh, peak kW,cost-of-service and revenue are also provided
in tabular and chart form.
Since these tables and charts are provided in the Profitability Excel Workbook
, they can easily be revised to suit special reporting needs.
The results of each Profiler session are written to a separate Excel Workbook
file which includes all analysis results, hourly load profiles, cost-of-service
data and rate specifications along with documentation on the user-selected
market segment customer characteristics. The use of Excel Workbook Profiler
output files has a number of advantages; Excel Profiler files:
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Promote sharing of analysis information in a familiar format
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Provide easy-to-follow documentation of analysis via familiar spreadsheet
functions
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Permit easy modification of tabular and chart presentations within Excel
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Provide flexible format for applying alternative cost-of-service or rate
structures without having to conduct a new session
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Make it easy to compare results across multiple analysis sessions
All Profiler analysis results, hourly load profiles and cost-of-service data
can be exported from Excel in standard CSV, text, XLS, and other file formats.
The MAISY system permits users to select individual customers or customer
segments based on dozens or even on hundreds of customer characteristics.
Pick any combination of business type, floor space, operating schedules,
space heating fuel, year of construction and many other variables to zero
in on a specific customer type or market segment.
What about other load-profiling systems that offer 12, 36 , 50 or some other
limited number of fixed customer segments? To represent 13 commercial business
types; electric, gas and oil heat; small, medium and large buildings requires
117 prototypes or "typical" buildings. Add in age categories and more than
200 "fixed prototypes" would be required, well beyond the scope of these
"fixed" systems. With MAISY, customer and segment selections provide hundreds
of possible definitions with nearly unlimited choices of customer
characteristics. Only MAISY provides the detail and flexibility required
to reflect the extensive customer and segment detail required in competitive
markets.
Relying on "prototype and typical" is a little like analyzing a "typical"
family which consists of two adults and 0.6 children - it may reflect
an average but it may also provide misleading results when used to understand
customers, to develop programs to fit the needs of individual customer segments
or to evaluate the profitability of serving these customers.
Sources of load profile data which rely on fixed customer segments (e.g.
large, medium and small offices) typically develop hourly load data with
engineering models (e.g., DOE2) of a single "prototype" building. The aggregate
nature of these representations misses the variation that exists among individual
buildings within these segments, hiding important market information. For
instance, a particular rate structure may provide an acceptable, competitive
profit on an entire segment represented by one prototype load profile; however,
analysis of subsets of the segment (which can be performed with MAISY but
not with the "prototype or typical" load profile approach) may reveal significant
diversity in profit levels across customer sub-segments such that some customers
are provided power at a loss while profit margins on other customers result
in cream-skimming targets for other suppliers.
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