Products

Announcing Signal, the Best Utility Rate Engine

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| Reading time 4 minutes

Genability is pleased to announce our latest product, Signal. Signal is our first product purely for Utilities and Retail Electric Providers (REPs). Signal empowers these providers with the ability to better understand and present electricity costs and savings wherever they engage, service and communicate with customers.

Announcing Signal

Signal answers a growing need for utilities to use the power of price to incentivize customers to use their energy in ways that are compatible with the macro trends like increased renewables and the electrification of transportation (i.e. to “Signal” smarter usage). Utility tariffs are becoming increasingly complex. Demand Charges and Time-of-Use (TOU) rates are on the rise. Regulators and policymakers are mandating more effective customer engagement on costs and savings as a key step in the path to rate reform. Signal was built to power customer relationship platforms, digital and mobile push communications, as well as more traditional paper reports. Signal supports it all.

What Can Utilities Power with Signal?

Tariff Plan Comparisons, Cost Transparency

Electric utilities can now provide their customers with instant comparisons across all available rate plans and options. This works for the smallest residential customers to the largest industrial plants. Signal also calculates accurate historical and month to date costs. Results can be provided down to a billing components or line item level, with granularity at the billing period, calendar month, or by Tier, TOU period, day, hour and even 15 minute increment. The data provided by Signal helps customers avoid bill shocks, compare trends in electricity costs and improve their customer satisfaction, all while reducing utility support costs.

Powerful “What-If” Functionality

Beyond rate plan and elective changes, Signal also helps customers “what-if” changes to usage patterns, efficiency measures, EV adoption and smart charging implementation strategies and much more. Signal helps utilities move load by quantifying the cost impact of load changes under TOU pricing, demand charges and during dynamic events. Signal calculates customers’ costs, presenting savings in dollars, not just kWh.

Deregulated Market Customer Acquisition

Signal was also designed for Retail Electric Providers. In deregulated markets, REPs can use Signal to acquire new customers by accurately displaying price-to-compare and bundled rates. For existing end customers, Signal enables a host of digital engagement features such as rate analysis, bill comparisons and “what-if” analysis. With Signal, REPs can fully reconstruct customers’ utility bills, enabling shadow billing and innovative energy service products.

Analysis of Solar, Storage, Electric Vehicles and More

Utilities are increasingly offering distributed energy advice and resources directly to customers. Utilities can use Signal to help customers understand the economics of these New Energy products, including rooftop and community solar, energy storage, electric vehicles and more. Genability’s Switch product provides the cost and savings information for nine of the top ten solar companies, as well as all major storage company. Signal now brings the same industry leading capability direct to utilities.

Accuracy and Performance Guaranteed

At its core, Signal uses Genability’s powerful rate engine and accurate, comprehensive tariff rate database. Our accuracy, depth of coverage of tariff rates, service performance, uptime and speed are unmatched in the industry. Our tariffs have been evaluated by NREL to be accurate to within two cents and we perform over 1,000 data quality checks on every single rate change. We have a track record for our API’s uptime at well over our 99.95% guarantee, and response times less than 150 milliseconds. With 24/7 critical support and over 100 combined years of energy industry experience, no other service can come close to Signal.

We work hard to maintain this level of performance for a reason. We understand how important it is for you and your customers that any costs and savings presented are accurate. That is why Signal comes with concrete guarantees on accuracy and performance. To do this, we’ve baked a comprehensive suite of tools directly into Signal to measure and validate accuracy during onboarding, rate updates, and ongoing in real time (more details coming on this in an upcoming blog post). Each Signal contract includes Service Level Agreements that guarantee support for millions of calls, with response times measured in milliseconds, and with costs that are proved to meet the highest accuracy standards.

Join Industry Leaders Oracle Opower, Engie and Just Energy

Today we are proud to also announce that Oracle’s Opower is a Signal customer, and that Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) is deploying Signal as part of their next generation digital engagement and rate education platform from Opower across all 5.5 million residential, commercial and industrial electricity accounts.  REPs such as Engie and Just Energy also use Signal to provide price-to-compare applications in their consumer portals, as well as present potential new products.

A Rate Engine for the Future

It’s important to note that Signal’s rate models are dynamic and data driven. No code changes are required to publish new tariff versions, even when there are fundamental changes to rate structure such as removing tiers or adding demand charges. In fact, our model supports every rate we have found in the market (ratchets, block & index, tiers, etc.), and given we’ve modeled residential, commercial and industrial rates for the USA, Canada, Mexico, Australia and the UK, we’ve seen a lot of complexity. Signal is ready and able to support your rate initiative now and in the future. Signal is also the perfect platform for more powerful rate design, and we intend to build enhanced design tools in the Signal product suite starting next year.

Want to Learn More?

Signal is available today. We have some additional information on our website. To learn more contact sales and we will  setup a demo and answer all your questions. Also, keep an eye out for future blogs where we will delve into all the details of Signal. Next up we’ll talk about how we make sure your rates, costs and savings are accurate and up to date.

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