10.7.1 Overview
There are several resources that are used to support billing-related functions. The Billing function set provides consumption or costs, estimates of future consumption, and/or historical consumption from a service provider to an end device. In addition to consumption and costs that would be calculated by the backend systems and shared with the end devices, billing also provides a mechanism to allow the service provider to push down targets or challenges to help consumers manage their budgets. A target could be a percentage or fixed value of reduction—possibly chosen by the consumer—to meet within a defined time frame.
The TargetReading Resource provides a way for a service provider to create challenges or targets for an end customer to try to achieve within a certain time frame.
The ProjectionReading Resource provides a way for a service provider to provide future projected consumption or cost for a particular reading type that may be calculated outside of the HAN.
The HistoricalReading Resource provides a way for a service provider to provide historical consumption or cost for a particular reading type that is verified and possibly corrected at the service provider backend.
The CustomerAccount resource contains information specific to the account such as the currency. The Customer Account is associated with a list of Customer Agreements.
The Customer Agreement resource contains information about a particular agreement for service, at a particular Usage Point and a particular Tariff Profile rate.
A BillingPeriod relates to a timeframe that a commodity is billed on. There may be multiple BillingPeriods that relate to different TariffProfiles.
10.7.2 List ordering
Table 45 —Billing list ordering
Resource name | Primary key | Secondary key | Tertiary key |
CustomerAccount | customerName (ascending) | mRID (descending) | N/A |
CustomerAgreement | serviceLocation (ascending) | mRID (descending) | N/A |
BillingPeriod | interval.start (descending) | href (ascending) | N/A |
HistoricalReading | description (ascending) | mRID (descending) | N/A |
TargetReading | description (ascending) | mRID (descending) | N/A |
ProjectionReading | description (ascending) | mRID (descending) | N/A |
BillingReadingSet | timePeriod.start (descending) | mRID (descending) | N/A |
BillingReading | timePeriod.start (ascending) | consumptionBlock (ascending) | touTier (ascending) |
10.7.3 Application guidelines/behavior
10.7.3.1 CustomerAccount and CustomerAgreement resources
A CustomerAccount is related to one customer (which may be an organization). Each CustomerAccount can have multiple CustomerAgreements associated, possibly representing different UsagePoints or commodities. Each CustomerAgreement can link the associated UsagePoint (Metering), Prepayment, TariffProfile (Pricing), and/or Billing information together. Servers SHALL support at least one CustomerAccount and one CustomerAgreement if the Billing function set is implemented, and SHOULD support at least three CustomerAgreements.
10.7.3.2 BillingPeriod resource
For each CustomerAgreement, there may be multiple BillingPeriods. Servers implementing the Billing function set SHALL support at least one BillingPeriod per CustomerAgreement, and SHOULD support at least three BillingPeriods per CustomerAgreement.
10.7.3.3 TargetReading resource
As a good practice, there should be only one TargetReading for a BillingPeriod. The values of the target readings will be an absolute measurement similar to a projected reading. If the service provider specifies the targets in a percentage reduction or other method it MUST be converted to an absolute value.
An example would be a customer who used 100 kWh in a previous month with a reduction target of 10%. This target would be specified in the TargetReading as 90 kWh and it would be left to the device to calculate the percentage or kWh reduction to which this equates.
10.7.3.4 ProjectedReading resource
Projected Readings are tools for service providers to help a customer understand what their consumption or cost might be projected into the future if all things within the home stayed fairly similar.
Examples of projected readings are:
Consumption for the billing period.
Cost of commodity for the billing period.
On day X the consumption would be Y, which would indicate a customer moving into a higher block tariff and thus a higher rate.
The different TOU tiers at the end of the billing period based on current consumption habits.
These are just examples. Other projected readings could be created.
10.7.3.5 HistoricalReading resource
HistoricalReadings are meant to provide a resource so that a service provider can provide consumption or cost that has occurred in the past and could be validated and corrected by back-office systems. Examples of this would be:
Previous day
Previous month
Previous billing period
Previous year
TOU A, TOU B, etc.
Block 1, Block 2, etc.
Cost of consumption for TOU A for the billing period
This is just a sample of what could be used. Because the information will be provided from the backend system, it can be of billing quality or near billing quality. End devices that read consumption from metering end points will be allowed to change their local consumption reading to match information from the billing resource to allow for closer to actual billed consumption. Servers implementing the Billing function set SHALL support at least one HistoricalReading and one associated ReadingType, BillingReadingSet, and BillingReading with at least one Charge, and SHOULD support at least three of each of these, multiplied by parent containers where appropriate (e.g., three HistoricalReadings with three BillingReadingSets per HistoricalReading for a total of nine BillingReadingSets, etc.). The targets in a percentage reduction or other method MUST be converted to an absolute value.
10.7.3.6 Deployments with multiple Billing servers
EndDevices that discover multiple Billing servers SHOULD differentiate between those sources on user displays of the information, unless the objects have the same mRID.
10.7.4 LogEvents
There are no LogEvents generated by this function set.