[ Quick links to previous parts of this series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 ]

The “Another Way” … maybe!

Mr Flanagan: “Holy turnip soup. There’s that maybe all over again. I thought this was it. What in the beh gee bee whitterkers is it now?”

I thought that would get your attention! Tired of hearing all this heinous trajectory of errors and such, are we?

Mr Flanagan (mumbling): “Besides that and you could have written all this pizazz on one page.”

I heard that! I’m rambling – that’s what ramblers do, they ramble and sometimes rumble. Besides, if CMP can lay the rambling on their customers, then CMP should be able to take the customer rambling rumbles and translate that … wait for it … wait … wait … into work. That’s right, CMP management needs to just get out of that attitude.

And here we go…

Figure 8-1. Access your smart meter data here via this button once you log in. Also make sure you are enrolled in this service.

Introducing the CMP data download. If you have a smart meter, then you can download your usage data from the CMP website! And I use this.

When you download data, the application prompts for a date range of the data you would like to download – the first and last date of said date range. You are also given the option to chose either a Comma Separated Values output file or a Green Button XML output file. Good luck finding Green Button software, but since it is XML, one can still load it in a spreadsheet program such as MS Excel. I don’t bother. Everyone’s mileage may vary of course. To each his own. Etc.

Mr Flanagan: “I like the sound of XML. The other one might get confused with the pharmacy.”

Nice to know that some things confuse people – kinda like some of what we’ve covered.

Mr Flanagan: “You got me there, Mr P.”

So to help folks understand, here’s a screen shot of that “submittal” screen.

Let’s pick 9/23/2020 through 9/24/2020 and choose CVS, I mean CSV, for output format.

Figure 8-2. The “My Smart Data” download Submit screen. AKA Green Button.

Then click on the SUBMIT button.

Note that the screen does not allow one to select just one day, ie 9/23 through 9/23. It has to be at least a two day range, as shown above. I find this restriction rather annoying.

After a few moments, the output is generated and placed in the Downloads folder on one’s computer. Let’s take a look at what we’ve downloaded.

Figure 8-3. The “My Data Download” in CSV (Comma separated value) format. This file can be read by other programs for subsequent analysis for example. The hidden data here is account and meter info not relevant to this discussion.

Let’s explain this download file briefly.

The download file contents are summed to each hourly interval, and thus, resulting in 24 rows for each day. If 2 days are selected, then 48 rows should be in the downloaded file, which is the case here.

Each row is comprised of 6 attributes – account info values, meter identifier, date time, and usage values. For this example, we are only interested in the date time and Usage fields, so that is what we show, and the other fields are blurred intentionally as previously mentioned. And, date time is one field.

Now that we’re past that, let’s look at the actual data.

And, amazingly, already the first row in the download file is actually the value for the last hour of the previous day, ie 9/22, and should not be in the download. Remember that we only asked for 9/23 through 9/24.

Here is a snapshot of the last hour of the 22nd.

Figure 8-4. See that the 0.841 kWh value here is the same value in the first line of the output file above? If not, trust me, and I know it is rounded down to two decimal places on this graph.

So consequently, that leaves 47 rows remaining to analyze, not 48. Guess what was left out?

Mr Flanagan: “Holy grappling hook roof destruction batman. Even I can see that the last hour of the 24th is missing.”

Oh, how’s that.

Mr Flanagan: “I read ahead. I mean it’s obvious.”

If it’s obvious, how come no one fixed it.

Mr Flanagan: “Probably the software vendor or the cloudy analytics service.”

Yeah, who knows – we could go on forever pointing at the sky. The customers don’t care. They only care that the data is what they asked for – nothing more, nothing less.

So yes, Mr F, the data for the last hour of the 24th is missing as highlighted below, along with other details.

Figure 8-5. The Usage download file. The file has been slightly modified to blur account information, and to also provide extra blanks for easier reading. Oops, part of my last comment “in red” is missing. It should read “…of the last hour of 9/24. To get this last hour for the 24th, one must download data for the 25th.” What nonsense, this part of the download should be fixed ASAP.

And, some sharp blurry eyed folks might have noticed from a previous episode that I showed the daily usage graph for 9/23. It was in fact a “flat liner” graph with every hour having a value of 0.79 kWh. Well, those same folks are seeing the “real” data for 9/23 in rows 2 through 25 of the download data, and the hourly usage values surely aren’t all 0.79! Score 1 for My Downloaded Data.

So apparently, in some cases, incorrect data is shown on the Energy Manager detail even though the correct data is available from a CMP system somewhere because I can download it. You can put data over there, you can put data over here, hey guys you wanna put data everywhere?

I think this is it. No more illusions.

Let me summarily summarize something and call it good.

The Absolute Mighty Big Small Ending

The customers only care that the information contained in Usage Alerts, Energy Manager, Usage Downloaded data, and that other thing called BILLING statements is 100% accurate.

At least that’s what I think they think.

And I’m about .000157232 percent of the CMP customer base.

If all of CMP customers combined were 10 Mount Katahdins high (the land mass in Baxter State Park, not the Oxen mammoth), and being of equal height, then we’d each be about 1 inch tall. That’s pretty small, and that’s what being a customer is not supposed to feel like.

The end.

Mr Flanagan: “Not sure if I get it – That Katahdin thing.”

Yeah, forget it. The final end. Maybe.