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Track: Electric and Gas Utilities
Ryan Damon
Southern California Edison
GIAS Lab - Room 228 GO 3
2131 Walnut Grove Ave.
Rosemead, CA 91770
Telephone: 818-302-7543
Fax: 818-302-8240
E-mail: damonrd@sce.com
On the Methodology of Geocoding Electric Utility Customers To Validate Billing Rates and Taxes
The Automated Geocode Validation System (AGVS) is an application developed by Edison to ensure that customers are charged the correct amount on their electric bills. Customer billing rates vary by a code defined by the location of the customer within geopolitical boundaries, composed of climate zone (defined by the California Public Utilities Commission), county, city, and Edison district. This code is used to determine a customer's billing rate and associated taxes. To ensure correct geocodes for billing, the AGVS application attempts to address match all 4.3 million customer accounts, overlay them with city, county, district, and baseline region boundaries, and assign a code. The resulting code value of each account is subsequently compared with its existing code. Those determined to be incorrect are subject to further analysis to ensure against incorrect code changes. Based on a set of criteria, codes that require adjustment are changed and uploaded to the mainframe customer billing database. This
process is run biannually to accommodate for new accounts and spatial data updates. A byproduct of the application is the customer location data that is generated, providing Edison its first spatial information at the customer level. This paper will discuss the technical development of the application, focusing on benchmarks of ArcView geocoding and the integrated ArcInfo/MatchWare approach that the AGVS application employs, and problems inherent with address matching over 4.3 million addresses in an area exceeding 50,000 square miles.
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