Interval Data Analysis: Read Your Own Load Profile

The tool above reads the interval data from your own ComEd account, home or business, and shows you the shape of your electricity use. Upload the file and you get back your load profile hour by hour, the load that never turns off, whether your heating and cooling run on electricity, and how much of your use lands in the expensive afternoon hours. If your account has more than one meter, it adds them together into your site's total load. It reads your data and tells you what is there. It does not sell anything and it takes no commission on anything.

What interval data analysis actually tells you

A monthly bill gives you two numbers: how much you used and what it cost. Interval data is different. Your meter records the power you draw in short windows, every 15 or 30 minutes, all month long. Lined up in order, those readings are a picture of your day. Interval data analysis is just reading that picture instead of the monthly summary.

Three things come out of it that a bill can never show. The first is your always-on floor, the load that runs around the clock even when nothing is actively in use and the heating and cooling are off. That floor is often a surprisingly large share of the whole bill, and it is the same every hour of every day. The second is your heating and cooling. When your usage floor rises in the coldest and hottest months and settles back in spring and fall, that seasonal swing is electric heating and cooling showing up in the data. The third is the timing of your day, when your use actually peaks and how much of it falls in the late afternoon hours.

What the tool shows you

The chart is your load profile: your average power for each hour of the day, drawn from every reading in your file. The dashed line across it is your always-on floor, and you can see exactly how far the rest of your day rises above it. Below the chart, three readings break down what the shape means.

Your always-on floor is stated in kilowatts and as a share of your total use, so you can see how much of your bill is the load that runs whether you are there or not. The heating and cooling reading tells you whether the tool found an electric heating signature, an electric cooling signature, both, or neither, and shows how far each month sits above your floor. The hourly pricing reading tells you how much of your summer weekday use lands in the afternoon hours, which is the shape that matters most on a rate that charges by the hour.

How to get your interval data from ComEd

Sign in to ComEd My Account and look for Green Button. Choose Download My Data, pick your interval usage, and download it. ComEd usually hands you a CSV file of your readings, though an XML export works just as well. Upload that file above. If your download arrives as a .zip, unzip it first and upload the file inside. The file is read once to build your profile and is not stored.

An honest note on what this is not

This is a reconstruction of your own history, and only that. It shows you what your usage is; it does not tell you what to do about it, and it does not project what next year will cost. If you add your rate, the tool will put a dollar figure on your always-on load, but that is a description of what that load costs at the rate you entered, not a savings claim and not a pitch. A picture of what is true is more useful than a recommendation from someone who has something to sell. That is the whole idea.