How to Enter Utility Rates

Modified on Mon, 20 Mar, 2023 at 10:33 AM

Periods

Each utility rate entry requires at least one Rate Period. A period is defined by a tiered rate structure and a time span to which this rate structure applies.

The time span of a period is defined by a "Cron string", which means you can specify extremely complex hour-by-hour rate schedules, but it does require some understanding of how to build Cron strings. The period Cron string requires 4 values, each separated by a space. You can either use the * character, which means "all", or use numbers instead of * to narrow down the period. The four values are as follows:

Here are a few examples of common utility rate schedules:

Period Entry	What it means
* * * *	rate applies to the entire year
* * 1-6 *	rate applies to the whole months of January through June
* * 1-6,10-12 *	rate applies to January through June and October through December
10-13 * 6-9 *	rate applies between 10am-2pm in June through September
* 0 * *	rate applies only on the first day of each month, (you would not typically see this type of rate)

Please note that all hours of the day and all days of the year must be accounted for. Therefore, if you set a rate as * * 1-6,10-12 * , which accounts for January through June and October through December, you must have an additional season which accounts for July through September.

It is also important to note that the minimum digit in the Chron string parts cannot be greater than the maximum. For example, if a season applies from November through May, you would need to enter the period as * * 1-5,11-12 *

NOT * * 11-5 *.

Tiers

Each period can have multiple tiers. A tier has a monthly usage range within which a certain price is charged. For each tier we can define a min, max and rate. If multiple tiers are defined, the min of the next tier must match the max of the previous tier.

The min of the first tier must be 0.