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Savings Analysis Watch - Monitoring the Quality of Your Proposals in Real-Time
By Ruben Garcia
| Reading time 3 minutes
Around 60,000 proposals for rooftop solar are expected to be generated per week in 2016. In the competitive landscape of distributed energy generation and storage, how can companies reasonably monitor the integrity of these proposals?
Genability is pleased to announce Savings Analysis Watch ─ a tool that assesses the quality of solar quotes in real time. This allows you to stay informed about the quality of proposals by monitoring up-to-the-minute Watch results, ultimately helping to reduce potential errors as they occur, and improving the overall experience at the point of sale.
How does it work?
When a Savings Analysis call is made, Watch compares the calculated Avoided Cost to an expected range in real time. A status is assigned to every comparison that is run: passed, failed, or failed critical. These denote whether the Avoided Cost is within the expected range, outside of the range, or significantly outside of the range.
For example, you use Genability’s Switch API to create a solar proposal for the home at 123 Genability Drive, San Francisco, CA, 94109. The Savings Analysis call made for this scenario returns a predicted Avoided Cost of 11.0 ¢/kWh. Simultaneously, Watch compares the calculated Avoided Cost to a range typically seen for addresses served by the utility in that area.
Similar addresses in PG&E’s Baseline Region T, typically exhibit Avoided Costs between 13.1 and 34.3 ¢/kWh. Watch then calculates the severity of failure (non-critical versus critical) based on how far from the expected range the check falls. Although this Avoided Cost has been flagged, it does not necessarily indicate there is an error (oversizing a PV system may legitimately lead to low Avoided cost, for example). Rather, the failed check suggests that Avoided Cost is atypical enough that someone may want to take a second look.
Where do the expected ranges come from?
To determine expected ranges, Genability examined the Avoided Costs calculated for nearly 2 million Savings Analysis calls.
Currently, we have about 120 checks covering areas (PG&E Baseline Region T for example) served by the top 50 utilities, where the expected ranges are based on statistical analysis of tens of thousands of savings analyses. We also have 48 state-level checks, which have relatively wider expected ranges. These particular ranges were based on analysis of historical Savings Analysis calls along with Avoided Costs generated using our national set of typical load profiles.
As the trends in Avoided Cost evolve over time (largely due to changing tariff rates), we will continue to update the expected range values, as well as expand coverage to other utilities.
How do I see Watch results?
There are three ways to see Watch results:
Dash
Genability’s new web app Dash, provides a simple UI to review and manage a list of Watch results, as seen in the image below. You can filter or sort by date, status, state and utility. Clicking any check result takes you to a view with information on the original Savings Analysis request and result. This can quickly help identify what may be triggering a check result – minimum bill charges being invoked, leading to a low Avoided Cost, for example.
Real-time email notifications
Watch can optionally send email notifications in real time. These emails are only triggered when Watch indicates a Savings Analysis leads to a critical-level failure. An example of what this email alert looks like is below. The email is sent immediately after the Savings Analysis is run.
Email alerts are inactive by default, but can be configured upon request. There is flexibility to customize which utility Avoided Costs you want to be notified about and which you’d rather not receive alerts for.
Savings Analysis Watch API
Finally, Watch results can also be accessed and integrated into your platform via a new API endpoint. This will be covered in an upcoming blog post.
I need to use Watch! How do I get started?
All Switch customers can access Dash and the Watch API. Email support@genability.com for questions on accessing these resources or if you’d like to start receiving real-time Watch notifications via email.
Those without a subscription to Genability’s Savings Analysis API can contact sales to get a demo of our Switch product!
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