Correlating NVEnergy Usage Data with Sense Data

It was some fun forensic data analysis… I’m not sure why you have so few Actual Reads, though in the old days you would only get one read per month. I’m guessing that the small percentage of Actual Reads, most frequently back-to-back, indicates a limit in NV Energy’s metering infrastructure. Most meters send small packets of data to other nearby meters, hopping the data from meter to meter until it gets to a receiving station that sends the data to their data center. If the path to the receiving station is long, through lots of other meters in the mesh, a utility will typically dial back the number of packets of data sent, just to prevent congestion. It would be worth asking NV Energy customer support if they could up the data rate / Actual Reads. I’m pretty sure that I have near 100% actual reads for every 15 min period.

On whether your bill is correct, a lot depends on what kind of plan you are on. If you have a simple fixed kWh price based on your net usage, or a monthly tiered rate based on your net usage, things should work out OK. The total net usage per month aggregates out OK (966.275kW for NVEnergy, 969.564kWh for Sense). But if you have ToU (time of use) pricing, the Calculated reads might not aggregate out correctly to match the real usage per ToU period. If I use the ToU labels in your data, there definitely is a difference between Sense/Net (continuous reads) and NV Energy/Usage (infrequent actual reads). I don’t know the rates for each of the 3 ToU but you can do the math.

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If SUMMER_EV_PEAK is the cheapest rate and SUMMER_ON_PEAK is the most expensive rate, then you are likely being charged too much. NV Energy is charging you for fewer cheap kWh and crediting you for less solar production during expensive hours than Sense is seeing.

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