The presenter, Stephanie Fetchen has compiled and expanded on her answers to the questions that came in during the Q&A session. All those answers can be found below, and if you have any further questions or would like to get in contact with Stephanie regarding Rate Acuity, electricity rates, or any other programs please contact her via email at: sfetchen@kfrservices.com.

• Do you have any provisions or road maps for utility rates for gas or water?

We plan to begin adding gas rates to RateAcuity in the first half of 2020. Water rates are something that we definitely want to add to the database platform in the future. However, we do not have a specific time frame that we plan to start adding water. It is not in the near term but that would be something we want to be doing in the future, probably in a few years.

• Does the smart grid as it is called impact RateAcuity analysis?

I am going to say no. That question may require some additional research to accurately answer fully but RateAcuity only includes and takes into account the rate information as it is published by the utilities. If the smart grid has any effect on how the utilities are setting rates or what rates are being approved by the commission then perhaps to some extent, but not in terms of the research we do or the rates that we put into the database.

• Does the RateAcuity platform do rate analysis for its users? Such as comparing two or more applicable rates schedules for the same utility?

It does not do the analysis. It would enable you to get the rates for both schedules you want to compare and then do your own analysis on it. Everybody wants to do their analysis in their own way and use their own methodology, and that is a lot of why we avoided doing analysis ourselves. We provide you the data so you can analyze and use the data with any method or logic you want to apply to it.

• Are the market-based rates such as ancillary services available in Rate Acuity?

If the information is provided in the utility tariff, we include it. If there is a specific rate charge that’s published in the tariff for an ancillary service, we would include that. For market-based services, I am not sure if you mean rates that change hourly basis or that sort of thing. If that is the case, no we do not include that portion of the rate, but we still have the other components that make up the rate for that particular account or schedule.

• How do you handle rates that are subject to a demand ratchet?

The way it is in the database right now, we have a note field where we define how that ratchet charge will apply. Our customers can be aware of the ratchet charge and figure that into their analysis and calculations where they need. We are actually in the process of building an additional table into RateAcuity to hold that ratchet information in a standardized format as well so that our customers can, rather than trying to extract it from a free field note field, have a structured format behind it and be able to write code around it.