Our APIs and Explorer Add Billing Period Support

How often have you received a utility bill and the billing period matched exactly with the beginning and end of the month? Never, right?

This is why we’ve introduced a billing period flag to the calculate tab in Explorer and to the calculate method in the APIs.  By checking the Billing Period checkbox (Explorer) or including the argument billingPeriod=true (APIs), the calculator will calculate the monthly fixed charges, demand charges and tiered consumption charges as if it were a whole month.  Now you can enter a date range as it appears on a utility bill even though that “month” can be anywhere between 20 and 40 days long and more easily reproduce a bill.

Of course you’re not always trying to reproduce a utility bill, but instead want to understand the complete, fully-loaded price for any electricity usage.  You can access this by not including the billingPeriod flag.  Then all your calculations will pro-rate monthly fixed and demand charges according to the number of days in the calendar month.  This is especially useful when modeling either small, discrete loads with date/time ranges spanning only hours, or for annual calculations.  In this context, pro-rating monthly charges is usually more appropriate.

Next time you log into explorer or call the APIs, try to reproduce your utility bill to the penny.  It’s never been easier!