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bjbj Scripts for the Online Tutorial Videos for the North Carolina Water and Wastewater
Rates Dashboard Video 4: The Rates Comparison tab Understanding the Bill Comparison and
Conservation Signal Gauges Once you ve selected your bill and comparison group criteria like
we ve done in the previous video, you are now ready to begin comparing rates and analyzing
the results on the right. There are four dials in the North Carolina Rates Dashboard: Bill
Comparison, Conservation Signal, Cost Recovery and Affordability. The gauges have a familiar
look to them: they look and operate like the gauges on your car dashboard! In fact, to
go along with the car theme, you also see a lot of greens, yellows and reds. Yes, they
actually do mark different signals based on where your utility falls. Red is generally
bad, and the greens are a safe spot to be in, given what that gauge is portraying. Next
to each gauge is a question mark. Click on one and a popup appears explaining that gauge.
Click on the X to close out of it. The first gauge is the Bill Comparison. This number
at the bottom signifies the monthly bill your utility charges monthly for the inputs you
selected on the left. Here, the Example Utility charges $62.25 monthly for water and wastewater
combined for 5,000 gallons/month of water use. The colors on the dial mark where the
utilities that you are comparing yourself to lie; basically, it marks where the blue
dots on the map fall. In this case, we are comparing the Example Utility to the 65 rate
structures that have similar number of accounts: 500 to 1,000 accounts. The dark green portion
of the gauge indicates where the middle 50% of bills lie in that comparison group. The
dark green area is flanked by light green areas which show where the middle 80% of bills
lie. The small numbers on the outside of the dial show you the range for this middle 80%
of bills so you can see where your dial falls within that range. Finally, the outer yellow
portions show where the highest 10% and lowest 10% of bills from this comparison group lie.
The dial on the gauge points to the bill for selected utility rate structure. If your dial
falls in any of the green areas, you are charging near what most of the utilities in your comparison
group are charging. If your dial falls in the upper yellow area, you are charging more
than 90% of the utilities in your comparison group. If your dial falls in the lower yellow
area, you are charging less than 90% of the utilities. Either way, you should probably
examine your cost structure and make sure your rates are appropriate. Notice that when
you change your selections on the left, the dial moves to reflect your new position based
on what you are now comparing. For example, if I now want to compare Example Utility to
utilities with Similar Customer Income, the map changes and the dial moves to the right,
showing that the Example Utility is charging more than the median (but still within the
middle 50%) of utilities in the new comparison group. Next, let s look at the Conservation
Signal gauge. The purpose of this gauge is to show the relative strength of the conservation
pricing signal sent by the selected rate structure. There are lots of ways to measure the relative
strength of a conservation message sent by a pricing structure. This particular gauge
shows what the customer will be charged for the next 1,000 gallons of usage beyond 10,000
gallons per month. In other words, this is the actual rate the dollars per thousand gallons
that the utility has set at 10,000 gallons/month. The Example Utility charges $6.88/1,000 gallons
at 10,000 gallons meaning a customer that goes from 10,000 gallons of use in one month
to 11,000 gallons the next month will see her bill go up by an additional $6.88. Since
the average residential household water use is around 4,000 or 5,000 gallons per month,
this gauge focuses on the price for usage at almost twice that amount. For many customers,
most usage at this level is discretionary: it goes to things like car washing, lawn watering,
etc. A utility that charges more for water at this level of demand sends a stronger message
that water conservation is important than a utility that charges less for water at this
level. In this gauge, we split the rates charged by the utilities in the comparison group into
the four quartiles. The darkest green area on the right shows the highest 25% of rates
and the darkest yellow area on the left shows the lowest 25% of rates. For this particular
utility, compared to utilities serving customers with similar income, we see that their dial
lands in the light yellow area, so we can say that they are sending a conservation signal
that is greater than a quarter of these 85 other utilities but less than half of them!
As with the Bill Comparison, this gauge is based on the bills of other utilities in the
comparison group. Change the comparison group, and the dial moves to its new position. I
suggest looking at All Utilities statewide for this dial. In this case, the Example Utility
is still within that 25th to 50th percentile. In the next video, we will look at the other
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