The Demand Insight platform, developed at Stanford’s Sustainable Systems Lab and released as open source software, is a collection of analysis and visualization tools designed to draw actionable insights into patterns in customer demand and grid operations from very large samples of smart meter data.
It is based on the insight that smart meter consumption data observed at hourly or 15 minute intervals is subject to the influence of site and building characteristics, appliance ownership and operation, occupancy patterns, and individual energy preferences and behaviors.
It provides algorithms and related visualization tools that provide actionable insights into patterns in and driver of energy consumption using time series meter data and location data. In other words, Demand Insight can estimate household or business characteristics that correlate with larger grid or EE/DR program goals.
With the capacity to provide these estimates for very large or even complete samples of customers within utility service territories, Demand Insight can be used to plan or operate utility grids more effectively and to support EE and DR programs in three ways.
- Program goals and offers can be designed based on a rigorous assessment of customer consumption patterns as they relate to grid needs.
- It can identify and target customers whose electricity consumption is best aligned with the goals of these EE and DR programs. These capabilities can be used on their own or to compliment more traditional geographic, demographic, and psychographic targeting and segmentation techniques.
- The messages used to recruit customers can be personalized based on tangible and actionable insights derived from their own meter data.