Utility services usage and demand reporting system

• US 20070124253A1
• Filed: 10/11/2006
• Published: 05/31/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 02/04/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: David Harroun, Kathleen Lorio, Richard Angerame
• Original Assignee: David Harroun, Kathleen Lorio, Richard Angerame
• Inventors: Angerame, Richard, Harroun, David, Lorio, Kathleen
• Granted Patent: US 7,309,979 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/63
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/06 Energy or water supply

Abstract

An electric power usage and reporting system for collecting electric power demand readings from multiple properties which may be either commonly owned or leased by the same company, processing the demand data to generate KWH and KW information on an individual property basis and on a combined properties basis and generating a report including the KWH usage and KW demand information. The report includes information on electric power KWH usage and KW demand in the aggregate and with respect to each property and includes information on coincident KW demand in the aggregate and with respect to each property.

Claims

1. An electric power usage monitoring and reporting process, comprising the steps of:

a) acquiring raw power usage and demand data including KW readings recorded on periodic intervals from electric interval power meters located at a plurality of commonly owned or leased properties;

b) transmitting and storing this raw data at a central location remote from said electric power meters;

c) processing said raw data over a standard billing period by;

(i) computing KWH values from the KW values and summing KWH values over said billing period for all said properties in order to generate KWH sums for each property;

(ii) aggregating said KWH sums together across all said commonly owned or leased properties in order to produce an aggregate KWH total, and

(iii) identifying a maximum KW demand value for all said intervals over said billing period with respect to each property, and

(iv) aggregating said KW demand values together across all said commonly owned or leased properties to produce aggregate KW demand figures for all said intervals over said billing period and identifying a maximum aggregate KW coincident demand total across all said properties over said billing period; and

d) reporting said KWH sums and said aggregate KWH total together with said maximum KW demand values for each property and said maximum coincident aggregate KW demand total in conjunction with electric power usage billing.

2. The process of claim 1, in which:

said maximum aggregate KW coincident demand total is based on the time of the maximum level of KW demand across a plurality of properties in a single building that are leased by a single tenant.

3. The process of claim 1, in which:

said step of processing said raw data includes the sub-step of computing contiguous KW (KWc) readings for all said electric power meters, and

said KW and KWH values are computed and aggregated over both off-peak and on-peak periods.

4. The process of claim 1, in which:

said maximum aggregate KW coincident demand total is based on the time of a maximum level of KW demand for a plurality of properties owned or leased by a single tenant but located in a plurality of different buildings.

5. The process of claim 1, further including the steps of:

verifying the quality of the raw data by checking for missing data, zero value data and duplicate data at the time said data is received for storage, and

validating the quality of the processed KW values by performing load factor and out-of-bounds analysis.

6. The process of claim 2, in which:

said periodic intervals are approximately 15 minutes long, and

said standard billing period is defined by the billing period of a utility company supplying electric power to said properties.

7. The process of claim 3, in which:

said maximum aggregate KW coincident demand total is based on the time of a maximum level of KW demand for a public utility system as accessed over the internet from a utility company providing power to said properties.

8. A system for monitoring and reporting electric power usage and demand for use in conjunction with electric power billing processes, comprising:

a) a plurality of remote electric interval power meters located at a plurality of commonly owned or leased properties for generating raw power usage and demand data including KW readings recorded with respect to periodic intervals for each of said properties;

b) a network communications link for transmitting this raw data from said electric meters to a central location;

c) a server located at said central location for storing said raw data and and including an application program for processing said raw data at the end of each billing cycle by;

(i) computing and aggregating KWH readings over said period across all said commonly owned or leased properties in order to generate aggregate KWH totals, and

(ii) computing aggregate KW demand figures over said period across all said commonly owned or leased properties and generating an aggregate KW coincident demand total across all said properties; and

d) a computer for accessing said aggregate KWH totals and aggregate KW coincident demand total online over a network and reporting said aggregate KWH totals and aggregate KW coincident demand total.

9. The system of claim 8, in which said application program also processes said data by:

computing contiguous KW (KWc) readings for all said electric power meters.

10. The system of claim 9, in which said application program also processes said data by:

synchronizing said raw data with respect to said periodic intervals and meters across all of said properties.

11. The system of claim 8, in which:

said aggregate KW coincident demand total is based on the timing of the maximum aggregate KW demand with respect to all said properties.

12. The system of claim 8, in which:

said aggregate KW maximum coincident demand total is based on the timing of the maximum KW building-wide demand for a single building in which said properties are located.

13. The system of claim 8, in which:

said aggregate KW coincident demand total is based on the timing of the maximum KW system demand for multiple buildings in which said properties are located.

14. The system of claim 8, further including the application program step of:

validating the quality of the processed KW values by performing load factor and out-of-bounds analysis.

15. The system of claim 11, further including the application program step of:

accessing the time of the maximum KW demand for one or more buildings in which said properties are located over the internet from a utility company providing power to the buildings.

16. An electric power usage monitoring and reporting process, comprising the steps of:

a) acquiring raw power usage and demand data including KW readings recorded on periodic intervals from electric interval power meters located at a plurality of commonly owned or leased properties;

b) transmitting and storing this raw data at a central location remote from said electric meters;

c) processing said raw data over a standard billing by;

(i) identifying maximum KW figures for all said intervals over said billing period with respect to each property, and

(ii) aggregating said KW demand values together across all said properties to produce aggregate KW demand figures for all said intervals over said billing period and identifying an aggregate KW coincident demand total across all said properties over said billing period; and

d) reporting said maximum KW-figures and coincident aggregate KW demand total in conjunction with electric power usage billing.

17. The process of claim 16, in which:

said step of processing said raw data includes the sub-step of;

computing contiguous KW (KWc) readings for all said electric power meters.

18. The process of claim 16, in which:

said KW values are separately computed and aggregated over both off-peak and on-peak periods.

19. The process of claim 16, in which:

said aggregate KW coincident demand total is based on the time of the maximum KW building-wide demand with respect to a single building in which said properties are located.

20. The process of claim 16, in which:

said aggregate KW coincident demand total is based on the time of a maximum KW system demand with respect to multiple buildings in which said properties are located.

21. The process of claim 16, further including the step of:

verifying the quality of the raw data by checking for missing data, zero value data and duplicate data at the time said data is received for storage.

22. The process of claim 16, further including the step of:

validating the quality of the processed KW values by performing load factor and out-of-bounds analysis.

23. The process of claim 16, in which:

said periodic intervals are approximately 15 minutes long, and

said standard billing period is defined by a utility company'"'"'s billing period.

24. The process of claim 19, further including the processing step of:

accessing the time of a maximum KW demand for a building in which one or more of said properties are located over the internet from a utility company providing power to the building.

25. An electric power usage invoicing system for use in cases where tenants to be invoiced by a properties manager have a plurality of different properties located at different locations comprising a tenant invoice including KHW totals and a maximum KW coincident demand total, produced by the steps of:

a) acquiring raw power usage and demand data including KW readings recorded on periodic intervals from electric interval power meters located at a plurality of commonly owned or leased properties;

b) transmitting and storing this raw data at a central location remote from said meters; and

c) processing said raw data over a standard billing period after the close of the billing period by;

(i) computing and aggregating KWH readings over said period across all said properties in order to generate aggregate KWH totals, and

(ii) computing aggregate KW demand figures over said period across all said properties and generating aggregate KW demand totals and a maximum KW coincident demand total across all said properties.

26. The invoicing system of claim 25, in which:

said step of processing said raw data includes the sub-step of;

computing contiguous KW (KWc) readings for all said electric power meters, and

said steps of computing aggregate KWH totals and aggregate KW demand totals further includes the steps of computing separate on-peak and off-peak totals.

27. The invoicing system of claim 25, in which:

said aggregate KW coincident demand total is based on the time of the maximum KW building-wide demand for a single building in which said properties are located.

28. The invoicing system of claim 25, further including the processing steps of:

verifying the quality of the raw data by checking for missing data, zero value data and duplicate data at the time said data is received for storage, and

validating the quality of the processed KW values by performing load factor and out-of-bounds analysis.

29. The invoicing system of claim 25, further including the processing step of:

accessing the time of the maximum KW demand for one or more buildings in which said properties are located over the internet from a public utility company providing power to the buildings.

30. A utility services billing system for assisting property managers in billing tenants within one or more buildings having a plurality of different tenants that have one or more different leaseholds within the buildings based on each tenant'"'"'s use of electric power utility services supplied to each building as a whole by one or more utility companies but billed to the tenants by the property manager based on their individual use of these services, comprising the steps of:

a) collecting leasehold based data on tenant use of utility services from a plurality of electric sub meters for tracking the use such services at the individual leaseholds of the tenants within the buildings;

b) analyzing such leasehold data to calculate the amounts of utility services KWH consumption and levels of utility services KW demand by the individual leaseholds in the buildings;

c) analyzing such leasehold data to calculate the amounts of utility services consumption and levels of utility services demand by each tenant on a combined aggregate basis across all of the leaseholds held by individual tenants having multiple leaseholds including the maximum amount of coincident demand by such tenants having multiple leaseholds;

d) computing individual tenant utility bill payment amounts based on said utility services consumption and demand calculations; and

e) reporting said amounts of consumption, demand, coincident demand and said corresponding payment amounts to said property manager on a tenant-by-tenant basis for use in billing said tenants and providing tenants with basic information on their use of utility services.

31. The utility services billing system of claim 30, wherein:

said step of analyzing leasehold data includes calculating the amounts of utility services consumption and levels of utility services demand by the individual leaseholds in the building on a total basis, an off-peak basis and an on-peak basis with respect to consumption and on an on-peak basis with respect to demand.

32. The utility services billing system of claim 30, wherein:

said step of analyzing leasehold data includes calculating contiguous KW (KWc) readings for all said electric sub meters.

33. A utility services billing system for billing tenants within a building having a plurality of different tenants that have one or more different leaseholds within the building based on their use of utility services supplied to the building as a whole by one or more utility companies but billed to the tenants by the building manager based on their individual use of these services, comprising the steps of:

a) collecting leasehold data on tenant use of one or more utility services from a plurality of sub meters for tracking the use such services at the individual leaseholds within the building;

b) analyzing such leasehold data to calculate the amounts of utility services consumption and levels of utility services demand by the individual leaseholds in the building;

c) analyzing such leasehold data to calculate the amounts of utility services consumption and levels of utility services demand by each tenant on a combined aggregate basis across all of the leaseholds held by said tenants having multiple lea seholds including the maximum level of aggregate coincident demand by tenants having multiple leaseholds;

d) computing individual tenant utility bill payment amounts based on said utility services consumption and demand calculations; and

e) reporting said amounts of consumption, demand, coincident demand and corresponding payment amounts to said building manager on a tenant-by-tenant basis for use in billing said tenants and providing tenants with basic information on their use of utility services.

34. The utility services billing system of claim 33, wherein:

said utility said utility services comprise electric power and said consumption is in KWH and said demand is in KW.

35. The utility services billing system of claim 33, wherein:

said utility services billing system covers more than one building, includes tenants having leaseholds in different buildings, calculates utility services by tenant across leaseholds in different buildings and reports said amounts of consumption, demand, coincident demand and corresponding payment amounts to building managers responsible for multiple buildings.

36. The utility services billing system of claim 34, wherein:

said step of analyzing leasehold data includes calculating contiguous KW (KWc) readings for all said sub meters.