genability.com | Tariff News

Notice on SMUD Tariff R-TOD-SSR, March - July 2022

Sacramento Municipal Utility District (“SMUD”) introduced a new Solar and Storage tariff for solar customers (Rate Schedule “R-TOD-SSR”), which took effect on March 1, 2022. SMUD published documentation regarding the revised tariff structure on their website: https://www.smud.org/-/media/Documents/Rate-Information/Rates/01_SSR.ashx
genability.com | Tariff News

California Net Energy Metering 3.0 (NEM3)

California is updating its Net Energy Metering policies in 2022, commonly referred to as NEM3.0. Genability customers can rely on Genability providing full support for them. Ahead of the publication of the final NEM 3 tariffs and rates, Genability has publishing a set of Tariffs with the latest proposed rate structures for customers to use. Once details are available, the finalized tariffs and rates will be published for all to use. In this blog post we track updates as the policies and rate changes firm up. We recommend checking back hear from time to time to get the lastest.
genability.com | Company

Whats new with Genability

Like many companies, the start of a new year is a time when Genability’s goals and objectives are updated and plans are set in motion. Here’s a summary of what we are up to in 2021.
genability.com | Tariff News

California Residential Electricity Rate Changes - January 2020

Southern California Edison (SCE), Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) all released new tariff rates on January 1, 2020 improving the economics of residential solar for all three utilities.
genability.com | Products

Solar Incentives Data

Genability Switch customers no longer need to maintain their own database of residential solar incentives. As of October 15, 2019 Genability’s Solar Incentives API has graduated from Beta to V1 and is now available under general release for Switch customers that wish to license it. We’ve also built a new user interface within Switch’s Dash web application to view this data along with your savings analyses.
genability.com | Tariff News

Review of Southern California Edison's New Post Solar Electricity Rates and its Impact on Savings

On March 1, 2019 Southern California Edison (SCE) will close its current default post-solar tariff (TOU-D-A-NEM2) and replace it with a new default post-solar tariff (TOU-D-4-9PM-NEM2). This tariff change will dramatically impact solar savings in SCE as the Time of Use (TOU) On-Peak hours move from 2-8 PM under TOU-D-A-NEM2 to 4-9 PM under TOU-D-4-9PM-NEM2. More importantly TOU-D-4-9PM-NEM2 introduces a Super Off-Peak period in the Winter from 8 AM to 4 PM, when the majority of solar production occurs.
genability.com | Products

Savings Analysis API Support for Non-bypassable Charges

Genability has just upgraded both our Savings Analysis API and our Calculate API to better support Non-Bypassable Charges (NBCs). What are NBCs you ask? Well that’s how the California utilities refer to the customer’s annual NBCs that cannot be offset by Net Energy Metering (NEM) Credits under NEM 2.0. These NBCs behave as a second minimum charge calculation that’s performed during the customer’s annual true-up.
genability.com | Tariff News

Review of California's Proposed Commercial Time of Use Electricity Tariffs

In 2019, both Pacific Gas & Electric (PGE) and Southern California Edison (SCE) will introduce new Time-of-Use (TOU) periods for commercial tariffs. Both utilities are moving highly-priced peak hours later in the day, from mid-afternoon to 4-9 PM. If you are selling solar, storage and/or energy efficiency in California, you want to be sure to calculate savings using these new tariffs. Thanks to Genability’s new Proposed Tariffs product for enterprise customers, now you can!
genability.com | Products

Proposed Tariffs included in Genability database

Our Proposed Tariffs feature allows you to use our complete set of tools to calculate the costs and savings of tariffs that are not yet published and live.
genability.com | Products

Genability Adds Support for PVWatts Version 6

We’ve added support for Version 6 of NREL’s PVWatts API, used to estimate the hourly production of a customer’s solar PV system.
genability.com | Products

Explorer Web App for Energy Professionals

Today we are pleased to announce the launch of our latest product, Genability Explorer, a web-application for Energy Professionals.
genability.com | Tariff News

Solar Incentives in Illinois, Net Metering Ends for Duke Energy South Carolina

The roller coaster for solar in the U.S. (call it a Solar Coaster?) keeps rolling this summer.  The state of Illinois has finalized the credit values for its Adjustable Block Program, which provides solar owners with an upfront payment for 15 years of estimated solar production.  Meanwhile, in South Carolina the state legislature failed to increase the net metering cap and Duke Energy has met its 2% limit. Starting on August 1, 2018 full net metering closes for Duke Energy SC customers and will be replaced by the Purchased Power Rider. First the good news for solar developers:
genability.com | Tariff News

Solar Incentives in Massachusetts

Later this year, Massachusetts will close out it’s SREC program replacing it with the new Solar Massachusetts Renewable Target (SMART) incentives. While there are still a few details left to be finalized, Genability is able to model the proposed SMART incentives for our customers and has made the new incentives available via the Incentives API.
genability.com | Tariff News

Duke Energy North Carolina Solar Incentives

At 9 AM this morning (July 9, 2018), Duke Energy North Carolina started accepting incentive applications for their Solar Rebate program and Genability has made the new incentive available via our Incentives API.
genability.com | Company

Genability Open for Business for Commercial Energy Customers

We have an exciting announcement. Genability is now open for business to any and all new energy companies servicing commercial and industrial customers. Today we have lifted all restrictions that might have prevented you from working with us in the past.
genability.com | Tariff News

Hawaiian Smart Export and Customer Grid Supply Solar Programs

Starting on 2/20/2018, the three Hawaiian investor-owned utilities will offer two new programs for customers with solar: Customer Grid Supply Plus and Smart Export. Both programs offer export credits for power provided to the grid, an option that has not been available in Hawaii since the Customer Grid Supply programs closed in 2017. Genability has just made these two programs available for Hawaiian Electric Co (HECO), Hawaiian Electric Light Co (HELCO) and Maui Electric Co (MECO) for use in your solar proposals.
genability.com | Products

Estimating Energy Usage from Customer’s Bill Amount

Do you have a potential solar customer’s 12 months of bills or their annual bill amount for electricity? If so, we can now estimate energy usage from that information!
genability.com | Tariff News

New York Public Service Commission Guidelines on Presenting Solar Savings

Effective December 1, 2017, solar developers in New York are required by the New York Public Service Commission (NYPSC) to meet precise guidelines (PDF Download) when presenting savings estimates.  Genability has reviewed these requirements and we have made some data upgrades for New York so that our solar customers can comply with these new requirements without any change to their API integration.  First, let’s review the new savings requirement:
genability.com | Products

Run Down of Genability Developer Website Updates

A quick rundown of the latest and greatest updates on GDN, our developer website.
genability.com | Tariff News

The Methodology Behind our Monthly Residential Rates Newsletter

Every month Genability updates thousands of tariffs. These changes can be as small as a simple rate increase or as large as a whole new rate structure. For just over a year now, around the 10th of each month, we have sent out a summary of those changes in our Monthly Residential Rate newsletter to help our customers better understand and anticipate these changes.
Products

Signal, Why it's the Best Utility Rate Engine

By

| Reading time 4 minutes

Many companies, including some utilities, have attempted to build utility rate engines. While most have ultimately failed or abandoned development due to the complex challenges involved, others cut scope and developed solutions for narrow use-cases. Signal is the first and only rate engine that provides revenue grade accuracy, comes out of the box with full coverage in North America and select international markets and includes what-if and distributed energy (DER) features. This makes Signal both a rate engine and a recommendation engine.

signal_bestrateengine_04

Earlier this year, Oracle Opower evaluated different rate engine solutions to plug into their next generation of digital engagement products. After careful consideration of all available solutions, including building a rate engine in-house, they selected Genability Signal. Together, we will deliver rate analysis, rate education reports, what-if analysis, and many new insights to millions of residential and commercial customers.

What makes a great rate engine?

Rate engines are no longer just about batch billing. They must be configurable on the fly, scale quickly, provide multiple calculations in an instant, and offer a suite of new features that support the distributed energy landscape. A rate engine should enable web or mobile digital engagement, batch reports, and offer insights useful for customer service. Customers want to understand the cost impacts of modifying their energy usage whether through purchase of products and services or simple changes in when they operate appliances. Whether it’s forecasting cost impacts of usage changes, evaluating costs across multiple tariff plans, or modeling new energy products like solar or EVs, the rate engine sits at the heart of the customer experience.

We’ve built Signal with all of this top of mind, specifically focusing on four core areas; Flexibility, Accuracy, Scalability, and Performance.

Flexibility

Genability has modeled every tariff we have seen whether residential, commercial, industrial or agricultural. Our data covers over 95% of the United States and select international markets, more than 1,200 load serving entities and nearly 15,000 tariffs complete with riders and electives. The diversity of tariffs we currently model includes time variant rates, demand charges, indexed rates, and numerous other configurations. When a utility proposes a new tariff, we likely have a similar tariff structure in production elsewhere. No need to invent anything.

For over five years we’ve provided cost and savings information to New Energy companies. Our customers include leaders in residential and commercial solar, energy storage, EV charging, energy efficiency and smart appliances. We bring that expertise and functionality to Signal so that your customers can instantly model cost and savings impacts of distributed energy purchases. Signal is versatile. It generates accurate calculations with the data you have; AMI data, monthly meter readings, or forecasting with incomplete data.

Accuracy

We have the most accurate tariff engine on the market. This has been demonstrated both by our track record of acquiring new customers, but also by third party validations like NREL’s in 2015. Once in production, we’re continuously QAing thousands of calculations against expected and actual bill values to ensure accuracy is preserved for all customers, irrespective of tariff or elective. We can model, verify & introduce new tariffs structures in as few as ten business days, and make simple rate changes in one business day. _Every time a change is made, we run extensive regressions against every permutation of every tariff, elective, and rider. By making sure the changes successfully regress against these control data scenarios, we ensure accuracy is preserved for all customers. When working directly with utility companies who have access to granular usage and bill determinant information, _we guarantee 99% accuracy.

Scalability

A major focus when designing Signal was making sure onboarding of new utilities is fast and always improving. We’re currently in production with more than 50 companies, all with various platforms in applications including solar, storage, commercial building energy management, EV charging, and smart appliances. We have solutions in place that address common stumbling points during integration including things like rounding, daylight savings time, holidays, etc. Our team actively supports tariff mapping to whatever data sources are available whether utility billing systems, meter data management systems, or other databases. We’ll make sure you get into production as quickly as possible, and frequently support multiple integrations simultaneously. Once in production there is dedicated staff monitoring the accuracy of our services, and a support team that is always available to answer data or engineering questions. We scale technology and resources to make sure there’s always more than enough capacity to support call volume well beyond actual levels.

Performance

Utilities are scaling vertically in the number of customers, as well as horizontally with new tariffs, products and services. Signal is built to support calculations simultaneously for multiple utilities. Signal is fast and reliable. Our cloud based solution is hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), and scales automatically with demand (see figure 1 below). We use advanced caching so rates return quickly, and have a parallelized architecture to provide speed and scale. With Signal, all of your data is secure. Our databases use industry-standard backup procedures and failover. Your data is always available.

Signal comes with strong SLAs that ensure speed and throughput. We understand that calculations must occur instantaneously for website and mobile engagement. Paper reports and outbound communications require the ability to run millions of customers through multiple calculations. Our services are designed to deliver sub 150ms response times for on-demand calculations and can handle millions of accounts to populate information on outbound communications.

API call response time vs. volume

Our Commitment

We take great pride in actively supporting our more than 50 customers, ranging from large organizations, like Engie and GE, to emerging energy customers like Drift who are growing their businesses. Genability is committed to serving you and your end customers  Our support team is comprised of subject matter experts available to help you along the way. More information about Genability is available here on our website.

See how Signal might help you by contacting sales.

Also in Products

Announcing Signal, the Best Utility Rate Engine

By Jason Riley | Aug 1, 2016

Genability is pleased to announce our latest product, Signal. Signal is our first product purely for Utilities and Retail Electric Providers (REPs). Signal empowers these providers with the ability to better understand and present electricity costs and...

Savings Analysis History APIs in Genability Switch

By Jenny Trinh | May 12, 2016

Over the past few weeks we’ve introduced Switch API upgrades including Dash, a web-app to view and troubleshoot savings analyses, and Savings Analysis Watch, which automatically reviews Savings Analysis results for atypical results.

Savings Analysis Watch - Monitoring the Quality of Your Proposals in Real-Time

By Ruben Garcia | May 4, 2016

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 Switch Dash Web UI

By Justin Lee | May 2, 2016

Switch Dash is a visual tool we developed to complement your origination platform and help guarantee that you are generating high quality proposals. This self service web-app takes the power of the Switch APIs and makes them...