Utility Rate Structures Fail to Consider Adjustments

[brtietz]

The data manager successfully connects to the URDB and downloads the rate data available in the rate field:

However, this is only one portion of the rate. Adjustments are also a critical feature https://apps.openei.org/USURDB/rate/view/62f12eaa7a464314265d3c76#3__Energy:

The actual values paid by the consumer are rate + adjustment: https://co.my.xcelenergy.com/s/billing-payment/residential-rates/time-of-use-pricing

[cancom84]

Thanks for raising the issue, we were aware of it. From our experience working with rate structures, each customer's contract seem to be a little different from the listed rates therefore we will let the users decide what numbers to use as they can manually change the numbers within the selected rate.

[brtietz]

Allowing users to enter rates make sense, there are a host of things that utilities change more frequently than the URDB gets updated, like fuel costs for natural gas. System Advisor Model takes the same approach.

For the naive or busy user who doesn't have time to look up the current rate, using rate + adjustment would have an error of 6.7% comparing the URDB value to the Xcel website, whereas only looking at rate would be off by 43%. Using rate alone is going to be biased lower than what the customer will actually pay.