OpenSolar has an extensive tariff database, but there may be utility departments or specific rates that are not in the database yet. If there is a tariff you would like to model with that is not in the database, feel free to create a Help Center ticket with the tariff details attached, and the support team will add it for you. You are also able to learn to create the tariff yourself by watching this video, or read up on all the tariff rate settings below.

Navigating to Create Your Utility Tariff Rates

In order to create a new tariff, go to the Control section of the app, and then go to Other > Utility Tariffs on the left-side bar.

From here you can search through all of the existing tariffs in our database, or to create your own tariff rate you can go to the top right hand corner and click on "Add Utility Tariff".

Tariff Rate Fields

Once you've created a name for the utility tariff and saved, you can add edit all of the tariff information. Description of each Utility Tariff field is shown in the table below:

Note: When creating a new project, OpenSolar will automatically select the tariff based on the country, service area of the distributor, the sector of that project (e.g. Commercial vs Residential), and the popularity. If the popularity of a custom tariff is set to 100, OpenSolar will always default to that tariff for all new projects.

Solar Compensation Mechanism

There are 6 Different Solar Compensation Mechanisms:

How to Create Tariff Bill Charges?

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Important Note: 

A new bill charge should be created for each Usage Rate line item that applies to an entire time-period. For example:

1. Flat Rates
2. Tiered or Blocked Rates
3. Time-of-Use (TOU) or Time-of-Day (TOD) Rates

You should NOT be creating multiple charges under a single Bill Charge by clicking on   since you should ONLY be adding multiple rates to a Bill Charge if it is a Time-of-Use (TOU) rate.

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In order to create a new item, click on the button  next to Bill Charges. Then click on the new item to expand the menu. 

Under the heading Type, you can click on the type of charge you would like to define. You can chose one of four items:

These items can be configured to be Flat, Block or Time Of Use (TOU) rates, and this applies to all rate types as listed above.

Note: Below we will illustrate how to create a Flat, Block, or Time Of Use (TOU) rates using a Usage Charge. However the same rate structures can be created for all other rate types.

Creating a Flat Rate

A flat rate (also known as a single rate) is a charge that applies to all time-periods of the tariff. 

To create a Flat Rate:

1. Create a bill charge by clicking next to Bill Charges and set the Type it to be a Usage Rate ($/kWh). Since the usage item is not tiered, you DO NOT need to set the Block Period and just leave it as default.
2. Create a rate by clicking
3. Set a Rate Name and Price 

The example below, shows a flat usage rate with a charge of $0.27/kWh:

Note:For flat rates, no schedule needs to be set, as the rate is automatically assigned to all time periods.

Creating a Block Rate

A Block Rate is based on incremental usage prices. For a given Block Period (the cycle before the tiering of the charge resets), the Price per kWh will vary based on which Limit (kWh) has been exceeded. 

To create a block rate:

1. Create a bill charge by clicking next to Bill Charges and set the Type it to be a Usage Rate ($/kWh). 
2. Next set the appropriate Block Period. There are two options (Daily = resets the tiers every new day, or Default = resets tiers at every new bill, or same as the bill cycle/frequency).
3. Click on  to add another block (also known as tier).
4. Set the Price and Limit for each block (Ensuring that the Limit for the last block is empty). 
5. If there are different rates based on season or weekend/weekday, you can enable the Schedule, which allows you to assign the different Rates to different times of the year. Otherwise, you don't need to enable Schedule. You can check out how to assign a schedule in the Time Of Use (TOU) Segment of this article below.

Note: Do NOT put a limit on the last block as any usage that is past that limit will have no rate assigned to it, and hence be charged at $0/kWh. 

Creating Time Of Use (TOU) Rate

A Time-of-Use (TOU) rate is a rate that has different charges based on the time of day.

In order to add TOU Rates:

1. Create a bill charge by clicking next to Bill Charges and set the Type it to be a Usage Rate ($/kWh). 
2. Then click onto add the number of different rates for each Time of Use period. (e.g. Create 3 separate rates for a TOU with Peak, Off-peak and Shoulder Rates).
   
3. After setting the name and price of each rate, you will need to set the time period in which these rates are applied.
4. First, click  and then select the time frame in which the corresponding rate gets applied on the schedule matrix.
5. Once the time frame is selected (indicated by the greened out cells), click  next to the rate being assigned.
6. Repeat steps for all other TOU rates.
7. Ensure that both weekday and weekend schedules are assigned.

How to Create Fixed Charges?

Fixed rates are charged to the customer regardless of how much energy they consume. You can easily identify fixed charges by the units of the charge. For example if the charge units is:

1. $/month
2. $/day
3. $/quarter
4. $/year
5. $/bill

To create a fixed charge, you will need to follow the steps below:

1. Click on next to Discounts & Surcharges to add a new Discount/Surcharge.
2. Click on the drop down underneath Type to choose the time scale (i.e. $/day, month, quarter, year)
3. Enter in a Discount as a negative number and Surcharge as a positive number.

So the example shown below will result in the bill having a surcharge of $1 per day. 

Extra Fields

Extra Fields contains various parameters that you can set for a tariff rate. These include:

To add an Extra Field:

1. Click on the next to Extra Fields.
2. Click on Extra Field Name drop down and choose an option.
3. Enter in the relevant value next to this.