Utility Data Delivery Can Be Fast!
Consider the work required to get customers into your product’s sign up funnel – then imagine the wastefulness of not converting them because your utility API took 90 seconds to authenticate their utility account.
Or after waiting 90 seconds, the customer has to wait somewhere between 15 minutes to 2 weeks to receive the email with your proposal for how your product will save them money on their utility bill.
Customers sharing their utility data is the single biggest funnel drop-off step for products deploying clean energy devices and delivering utility bill savings.
In this post we’ll share how consistently fast a modern utility API like Bayou Energy’s can be across 3 key areas and share targets for how fast each area should be:
- Authenticating Customer Utility Accounts (Target 5 seconds or less)
- Getting Utility Bill Data (Target 60 seconds or less)
- Getting Interval Meter Data (Target 60 seconds or less)
Authenticating Customer Utility Accounts
Sharing utility credentials is usually one of the first steps a customer takes in engaging with an energy software product.
This step of collecting and verifying customer utility login credentials as correct with their utility is a moment of asking for customer trust. This trust should be rewarded with an instant experience that authenticates their utility accounts within 5 seconds or less in most cases.
The map below shows the median time Bayou’s API authenticates customer utility accounts across America’s utilities.
In the cases where utility accounts are authenticated more slowly (>5 seconds), the main drivers are:
- Slow utility websites
- Websites that have advanced requirements for logging in (solving captcha challenges, IP screening and anti-bot systems).
Even in the cases with authentication times >5 seconds, this still should only take ~15 seconds or less.
For gauging consistency of authentication speed and the range of outcomes, we can look beyond the median to the distribution of authentication speed for a specific utility. Here’s Pacific Gas and Electric as an example:
Pacific Gas and Electric’s data distribution has the largest concentration near its mean of ~6.5 seconds with shorter times of 2 seconds and longer times of 9 seconds.
This distribution data gives us confidence that customers will consistently have their utility accounts authenticated quickly.
Getting Utility Bill Data
After getting the customer to successfully authenticate their utility accounts – imagine now that retrieving their utility bill data takes anywhere from 15 minutes (best case) to two weeks or more.
During that time critical parts of your product experience are delayed and customers must wait:
- To learn how much they’ll save on their utility bill with your product
- To actually sign-up for your product (And any resulting utility/wholesale market programs, new retail electricity supply plans etc)
Faster utility bill data results in higher customer conversion for your product – this should be within 60 seconds or less in most cases.
The utilities with >60 second data delivery times are usually driven by:
- Slow utility websites
- Difficult to parse utility bill PDF formats
Unlike authentication which only has to happen once per customer, in utility bill data, accounts with many meters (typically commercial and industrial customers) will have more bill pdfs and utility data to parse, resulting in longer data delivery times.
In the histogram showing the distribution of bill data delivery for Xcel Energy, we see a strong concentration of bill data delivery at ~60 seconds, some values between 100 and 150 seconds and then a smaller number of outliers around 650 seconds.
Getting Interval Meter Data via Green Button
Imagine you’re signing up customers to optimize their energy usage using devices like thermostats or batteries against utility time of use tariffs but fetching interval meter data takes hours (or even days).
During that delay, your product can’t display real-time cost savings or optimize battery dispatch schedules. Potential customers lose interest as they wait to hear from you and your conversion suffers.
Similar to bill data, utility interval data should be delivered within 60 seconds or less.
While not all utilities provider intervals, the utilities with >60 second interval meter data delivery times are usually driven by:
- Slow utility websites
- Clunkiness in how utilities make intervals available for download with Green Button Download My Data (DMD) on their website (ie only download 1 day’s worth of data at a time instead of weeks, months, years etc.)
Like bill utility data, utility interval data retrieval will take longer for customer utility accounts with many meters.
ComEd’s interval meter data delivery time distribution has two main clusters:
- Data between ~30 to 75 seconds for consumer customers
- Around 100 seconds for commercial and industrial accounts
Wrap Up
In the never ending competition for customer attention and better funnel conversion, every second counts. Slow utility account authentication can de-rail customer interest before they even get started.
Similarly, delayed utility bill data and interval meter data could mean you lose customers before they’re fully onboarded to sign up for your product.
Our recommended speed targets for a utility API are:
- Authenticating Customer Utility Accounts (5 seconds or less)
- Getting Utility Bill Data (60 seconds or less)
- Getting Interval Meter Data (60 seconds or less)
The data shared in this blog post is available via API. Here’s the product announcement and API reference for the /utilities endpoint.
If you’d like to learn more about how you can integrate instant utility data into your product, schedule a call with James (Bayou’s CEO). We’d love to learn more about what you’re building and how we might be able to help.
For a broader view into the world of using a utility API, check out our posts:
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