OpenSolar provides a variety of options to tailor the customer’s electricity usage so their proposal is as accurate as possible. Below is the step-by-step guide on how to customize the customer's electricity usage.
Selecting Electricity Usage
This article takes place in the Project zone, select the project you wish to work on and select the Energy tab.
From the Energy tab, locate the Electricity Usage section. Use the drop down to select the corresponding electricity usage for the selected project.
Entering Usage Data
OpenSolar provides a range of different options to input your customer's electricity usage depending on the available data at hand. Below are a list of options we provide:
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Description |
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OpenSolar Usage Estimates If you don't have the customer's electricity usage or bill, you can choose one of OpenSolar's usage estimations for the project location. |
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Default |
OpenSolar provides an estimate for the average usage in selected locations (Same as Estimate (Medium)) |
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Estimate (Low) |
OpenSolar provides an estimate that is below the average usage in selected locations. |
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Estimate (Medium) |
OpenSolar provides an estimate for the average usage in selected locations. |
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Estimate (High) |
OpenSolar provides an estimate that is above the average usage in selected locations. |
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Enter kWh Usage If you have your customers' electricity usage information, you can choose one of the below options to set the usage. |
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Daily Consumption kWh |
Enter up to 12 monthly average daily kWh values. Months with missing values are interpolated by OpenSolar. |
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Monthly Consumption kWh |
Enter up to 12 monthly kWh usage values. Months with missing values are interpolated by OpenSolar. |
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Quarterly Consumption kWh |
Enter up to 4 quarterly kWh usage values. Quarters with missing values are interpolated by OpenSolar. |
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Annual Consumption kWh |
Enter single kWh annual usage. |
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Hourly Interval |
Enter 8760 comma-separated hourly kWh consumption values for the entire year. The 8760 hourly values assume that:
To quickly fill out these hourly values you can copy-paste from an excel sheet with 24 columns (hours in a day) x 365 rows (days in the year). See the article How to Enter Hourly Interval Data. |
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Enter Electricity Bill If you have your customer's electricity bill and have set your customer's electricity tariff (Please read this article on how to create custom tariff rates), OpenSolar can automatically calculate their total usage. |
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Annual Bill |
Enter a single annual bill. OpenSolar will attempt to interpolate the total usage based on the annual bill value and electricity tariff set. |
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Quarterly Bills |
Enter quarterly bills. OpenSolar will attempt to interpolate the usage based on the quarterly bills provided and the electricity tariff set. Quarters with missing values are interpolated by OpenSolar. |
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Monthly Bills |
Enter up to 12 monthly bills. OpenSolar will attempt to interpolate the usage based on the monthly bills provided and the electricity tariff set. Months with missing values are interpolated by OpenSolar. |
| Bi-monthly bill | Enter the bill for 2 months at a time. OpenSolar will attempt to interpolate the usage based on the monthly bills provided and the electricity tariff set. Months with missing values are interpolated by OpenSolar. |
Shaping Electricity Usage Profile
Note: This is NOT required if you entered in Hourly Interval data.
Once you have inputted data to usage data, you have a few additional settings that allow you to shape the electricity profiles to better match your customer's electricity usage behaviour.
Shaping Weekday & Weekend Daily Energy Profiles
Note: Setting the Weekday & Weekend curves will impact your customer's electricity bill if they are on a TOU tariff. It will also impact the total amount of self-consumption from your PV system design.
You can shape what the typical daily usage profiles are like for your customers by clicking on "show more" using the Weekday/Weekend Usage Curve boxes and selecting the option from the drop-down. If none are chosen it will default to Evening Peak.
OpenSolar offers a range of different Energy Profile shapes that you can select from. Below are a graphical illustration of these options:
Scaling contribution of Weekday to Weekend Usage
You also have the ability to scale the Weekend energy usage relative to the weekday usage. If, for example, 10% more energy is used on the weekend, you can enter 1.1 in this box. If 50% more energy, 1.5.
Setting Demand using 8760 values
If the demand is not set, OpenSolar currently assumes that the hourly usage profile is the same as your customer's maximum hourly demand. In almost all cases, your customer's maximum demand will be greater than the hourly usage profile and setting the demand will be important for demand charge calculations. OpenSolar provides 8760 hourly values to set the demand for each hour of the year. See the article How to Enter Hourly Interval Data.
Setting Controlled Loads
If there are any controlled loads that are implemented in the household (such as a water heater) then you can enter in the daily usage (in kWh) of up to 3 in each of the boxes labelled Controlled Load 1/2/3 Daily Usage. Currently, controlled load usage by default is distributed between 12am - 5am.
After you have made your changes to this section, ensure that you click the 
button.
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