Knowledgebase: EC Online
EC Enterprise - Reacting to a Gap in Weather Data
Posted by Becky Gruber, Last modified by Joel Brickell on 03 July 2019 08:32 AM

**This article applies to self-hosted clients only. EnergyCAP monitors and resolves issues with weather data, automatically, for our hosted clients.

For on-premises EnergyCAP clients, weather data should be imported into the EnergyCAP database on a regular basis. EnergyCAP provides two convenient methods for downloading the latest weather data:

  • Download new data from within the EnergyCAP Installed Client – From Weather Stations (within the Setup module), users can select the Import Readings option. This option will automatically check for updated weather data from EnergyCAP and populate the EnergyCAP database with the latest weather data. See the attached image.
  • Run the “Weather Task” importer – The EnergyCAP installed client also includes a command-line executable for importing weather data – this executable is called “WthrTask.exe” and it can be found in the root directory where the EnergyCAP installed client has been installed. Many clients have automated scripts that run this task daily to keep weather information up-to-date. This executable imports weather in the same manner as manually importing weather through the application – checking the EnergyCAP weather service for any new weather data that should be imported into the EnergyCAP database.

 

If your organization ever gets into a situation where there is a gap in weather data (e.g., one or more days of weather data are missing between existing weather values), the following steps will help you download the missing weather data and ensure that any affected bills are properly processed:

  • Delete any weather data after the gap – Because the EnergyCAP weather importer always looks for new weather data after the latest weather data that already exists in your database, it’s important to remove any weather data after a gap to ensure that the weather importer will properly retrieve all necessary values. For instance, if you found a gap in weather data for the days of 12/31/2018, 01/01/2019, and 01/02/2019, but you have already downloaded weather data for dates after 01/02/2019, you should delete all data after the gap. A database administrator will need to run a statement in your database like the one below to delete existing weather data:

 

-- clear weather data after 12/30/2018 (commodityID 21 = weather)

DELETE o

FROM   Observation o JOIN Channel c ON o.channelID = c.channelID

WHERE  o.time>='2018-12-31 00:00:00' AND c.commodityID = 21

 

  • Import weather data – Use either of the two methods listed above to import the latest weather data from EnergyCAP (through the installed client or through the command-line executable.
  • Reprocess affected bills – EnergyCAP’s Calendarization and Normalization processes both depend on valid weather data to properly process bills. If weather data is not available for a bill when it is entered/imported into EnergyCAP, the Calendarization and Normalization processes will still process the bill, but the results will lack weather sensitivity. Running the following database statement will cause the affected bills within the given date range to be re-processed for Calendarization and Normalization by EnergyCAP.

 

-- reprocess affected bills

UPDATE bill SET dirty = 1 WHERE endDate >='2019-01-01 00:00:00.000'AND beginDate <='2019-01-10 00:00:00'AND createdDate >='2018-12-31 00:00:00';EXEC cleanbill;

 

Following these steps will ensure that any gaps in weather data are properly handled within on-premises EnergyCAP databases. For hosted clients, EnergyCAP monitors and resolves any weather data issues automatically.

 

NOTE: If you have used the EnergyCAP Cost Avoidance feature on any bills where weather data is missing, these bills should have Cost Avoidance recalculated after the weather data is available to ensure that the proper Use and Cost Avoidance values are calculated.



Attachments 
 
 ECE_Weather Import.jpg (35.32 KB)
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