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The EFC, through funding provided by the North Carolina Urban Water Consortium, has developed a new approach for analyzing billing records to observe the water use patterns of residential customers over a long period of time. By tracking each household's water use over many months, new analytics can be discovered that provide important information to utility managers, finance directors and customer service managers, to better design their rate structures and how to micro-target specific households with customized messages based on their water use patterns. For example, a utility can use this method to identify which customers have use much more water in the summer than in the winter - indicating perhaps the use of irrigation systems that are not already metered separately - and contact them during water shortage periods and mandatory watering restrictions with a special bill insert educating them on the utility's policies.
In addition, the EFC has partnered with the Center for Environmental and Resource Economics Policy to match household water consumption with information gained from a household phone survey on water use, household characteristics and demographics.
Peer-reviewed Journal AWWA article, Nov 2011, 103:11, 45-58: Mining Water Billing Data to Inform Policy and Communication Strategies (link to article on external website)
Every utility serves a unique customer base with its own water use and revenue-generation patterns. Knowing its customers in detail helps a water provider customize policies and communication strategies not only for the customer base but also for smaller, targeted groups. This article introduces a relatively inexpensive way that utilities can use existing billing data to learn more about customer use patterns and applies this methodology at five North Carolina utilities.
Communication at your Fingertips: Using Billing Data to Get to Know Your Customers (pdf, 1.6 Mb)
Published in the Fall 2010 edition of NC Currents.
This article describes the new methods that the EFC developed, and shares some of the unique results of this analysis and their significance to utilities.
Shifting Baselines in Water Utility Management: Using customer-level analysis to understand the interplay between utility policy, pricing, and household demand (pdf)
May 2012
For this project, the Environmental Finance Center designed a Water Customer Sales Profile to examine how customers' water use patterns have shifted in response to a number of utility changes instituted over the study period (2007-2010). The study sought to establish post-transition baseline usage and revenue analyses for seven of the North Carolina Urban Water Consortium utilities, minimize negative revenue impacts under the new operating environment, and compare analyses across utilities undergoing similar transitions.
Refining Residential: Using Customer Consumption Records to Tell a Story of Utility Management (pdf)
December 2009
This research sought to refine and better understand a customer class that so often is lumped
together in utility billing databases as "residential". The EFC analyzed 30 months (July 2006 - December 2008) of residential
billing records for Fayetteville Public Works Commission (PWC), Greenville Utilities Commission (GUC),
City of High Point Utilities (HP), Charlotte-Mecklenburg Utilities (CMU), and Orange Water and Sewer Authority (OWASA),
to determine how customers changed their consumption over time and how they impacted the utilities' revenues before
and after the 2007-2008 drought of record in NC.
Residential Customer Water & Wastewater Sales Analyses and Profiles (pdf)
September 2008
This paper investigates use of customer sales information (billing data) to support
water services management decisions. The paper examines trends and
relationships related to individual customers' water usage patterns and
fluctuations, irrigation and capacity use, timeliness of payment and
cutoff patterns, and geographic variation within three large North Carolina
communities. The variation in the results for each of the utilities
studied reinforces the necessity of customizing pricing and policy to local conditions.
Woodfin Water District Conservation Analysis (pdf)
July 2008
The EFC analyzed the billing records of Woodfin Water and Sewer District using a new approach
that tracks each customer's usage patterns over time to reveal new customer-level information
that can be used by the utility in rate setting and resource management. This document highlights
the primary findings from the District's billing records in 2007. This analysis will help
explain who is exerting the greatest demand on water supplies, how to target those customers with water
conservation pricing signals and targeted education messages and the potential impacts of water
conservation on system revenues.
These 4-page documents provide the utility manager with a summary of the findings of this research
focused on single topics.
Residential Irrigation (pdf)
Billing Analysis for Revenue Stability (pdf)
The EFC tracks each household's water use over time, and determines what proportion of households
display specific types of water use patterns. Knowing these results, the utility can design their rate structures and
communication strategies (e.g.: to encourage conservation) that are better targeted to the different groups of
residential customers, in order to optimize their impact. At the end of the analysis, the EFC prepares for the utility
a Customer Sales Profile that presents several graphs and tables to display this new information. Many of these
metrics are original. These Customer Sales Profiles are shared with the utilities directly. Here is the Town of Benson's
Customer Sales Profile, and another example of a Profile that displays fake data but shows the types of metrics and analyses
that the EFC conducts and shares with the utilities.
Town of Benson, NC's Customer Sales Profile - 2011 (pdf)
Example of a Customer Sales Profile - 2008 (pdf)
Refining Residential: Using Customer Consumption Records to Tell a Story of Utility Management (pdf)
Presentation at the NC AWWA-WEA Spring Conference
April 20, 2010
Refining Residential: Using Customer Consumption Records to Tell a Story of Utility Management (pdf)
Presentation at the NC W.R.R.I. Conference
March 30, 2010
Refining Residential: Using Customer Consumption Records to Help Manage Water Services (pdf)
Presentation to the NC Urban Water Consortium
December 11, 2009
Residential Customer Characteristics and Consumption Behavior at the Household Level: What Can We Find Out From Billing Records? (pdf)
Presentation at the NC W.R.R.I. Conference
October 9, 2008
Shadi Eskaf, Christine Boyle and Mary Tiger are the analysts working on this study. Please contact Mary Tiger for more details.
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