×

Computerized utility cost estimation method and system

  • US 20030009401A1
  • Filed: 04/29/2002
  • Published: 01/09/2003
  • Est. Priority Date: 04/27/2001
  • Status: Abandoned Application
First Claim
Patent Images

1. In a computer-based system for managing utility information responsive to at least one of usage and estimated usage of utility resources, a billing system in an energy management system implemented by a computer system, creating reports that will display a cost estimate of billing charges for a given customer based on usage information including customer tariff and time period, said billing system comprising:

  • stored information regarding at least one user, at least one utility relating to the at least one user, and a plurality of rules that may be applied by the at least one utility for the at least one user in determining the utility information;

    stored measurement related or estimate related information representative of the at least one of the utility usage and the estimated usage by the at least one user;

    a web rate module comprising a site abstraction layer and managing substantially all user interface functionality and retrieving data;

    a billing calculation module operable with respect to said web rate module, administrating billing charges and calculating the billing charges, and including data objects used in the billing engine, the data objects including;

    a billing item object to assign at least one value from one billed item to another, and a billing engine object including;

    a read from file object determining the type of data read and processing the data, an initial period object initializing specified periods and preparing for processing, an and-period object used for joining periods that need to be accessed for a given billing period defined by the user, a not-period object used to filter out periods which will not be applied to the specified billing period specified, a process period expression used to process period information by evaluating operators, a get usage object used to retrieve usage information from the database for the specified period of time and use to calculate an amount to bill for this period of time, calculate bill object used to call the calculation charges method responsible for calculating all charges to a selected bill, a calculation charge object used to calculate all charges for the bill, a get tariff choices object used to accumulate a list of tariffs to be selected, a locate tariff object used to determine a tariff from the tariff list object, a get tariff name object used to determine the tariff name that is to be displayed on the web page, an identify tariff constants object used to determine when the tariff is present, a check charge object used to determine when the tariff listed for a given charge actually exists in the tariff list, an optional dump object used to display all utility, tariff, period and charge information, an evaluate object used to evaluate billing functions provided in the billing engine including bill amount, bill quantity, bill hours, bill history quantity, bill days, and bill history amount, and a calculate historical bill object used to calculate an historical bill;

    a utility module storing and operating on utility information accessible to said billing engine object; and

    a tariff module storing and operating on tariff information accessible to said billing engine object. means for selecting at least one preference representative of a variable utilized in generating the utility information for the at least one user;

    means for generating the utility information for the at least one user responsive to the at least one preference, the utility information relating to the at least one user, the at least one preference, and the measurement related or estimate related information for the at least one user; and

    a display displaying a report representative of the utility information utilizing the at least one preference.

View all claims
  • 5 Assignments
Timeline View
Assignment View
    ×
    ×