DEVICES, SYSTEMS, AND METHODS FOR OBTAINING HISTORICAL UTILITY CONSUMPTION DATA

• US 20170140396A1
• Filed: 11/16/2016
• Published: 05/18/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 11/16/2015
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Ennovationz Inc.
• Original Assignee: Ennovationz Inc.
• Inventors: Amram, Martha, Carrico, Sandra, Ward, Brian, Nelson, David, Chen, Trista, Smith, David
• Application Number:
  US15/353,479
• Publication Number:
  US 20170140396A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0201 Market modelling; Market analysis; Collecting market data
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/06 Energy or water supply

Abstract

A computer-implemented method for identifying utility usage from a historical utility file is disclosed. The method includes obtaining a file containing historical utility consumption of a dwelling over a time period; processing the file through optical character recognition (OCR); identifying contextual data from the OCR processed file; identifying chart data from the OCR processed file; extracting one or more values from the chart data, wherein the values correspond to one or more elements of the chart data; and contextualizing the extracted values from the chart data by applying the contextual data to the extracted value to obtain utility usage data.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for identifying utility usage from a historical utility file, comprising:

obtaining a file containing historical utility consumption of a dwelling over a time period;

extracting contextual data from the file;

registering one or more chart elements from file;

extracting one or more values from the chart elements; and

contextualizing the extracted values from the chart elements by applying the contextual data to the extracted value to obtain utility usage data.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising OCRing the file.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the registering comprising:

obtaining a historical utility template;

identifying one or more feature points on the template, and

correlating the template points with one more points on the file.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the chart element is a bar chart.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the chart element is a pie chart.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the chart element is a line chart.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the utility is electricity and the historical utility file is an electricity bill.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the utility is water and the historical utility file is a water bill.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the utility is water and the historical utility file is a water bill.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the utility is natural gas and the historical utility file is a gas bill.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the contextual data comprises identity of the utility provider.

12. The method of claim 2, wherein the contextual data comprises labels of the x-axis and y-axis.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein the contextual data comprises location information of the dwelling.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein the contextual data comprises seasonal information.

15. The method of claim 6, wherein the utility usage data are the kWh consumed as indicated by the graph component of the graph element.

16. The method of claim 1, wherein the file is an image captured using a photo capturing device.

17. The method of claim 1, further comprising analyzing the image suitability of the file.

18. The method of claim 17, further comprising providing feedback to the user based on the suitability of the file.

19. A computer system for identifying utility usage from a historical utility file, comprising:

a processor, and a non-volatile memory component, wherein the processor is configured to;

obtain a file containing historical utility consumption of a dwelling over a time period;

processing the file through optical character recognition (OCR);

identify contextual data from the OCR processed file;

identify one or more chart elements from the OCR processed file comprising one or more chart components;

extract one or more values from the chart elements, wherein the values correspond to one or more of the chart components; and

contextualize the extracted values from the chart components by applying the contextual data to the extracted value to obtain utility usage data.