Different editing methods for the creation of a consumption profile. – PVsell

This article will focus on the editing options we offer for editable consumption profiles. You can either create a new consumption profile or open a consumption profile from the library and edit the already existing trading/non-trading data.

Your customers consumption will vary depending on volumes of usage and seasonal (as well as daily) variations in energy use. Therefore - using a reflective consumption profile for your OpenSolar analysis is the key for successful financial modelling.

1. Open a consumption profile from the library or create a new one

Simply open an existing consumption profile or create a new one from scratch.

2. Click Edit to jump in edit mode

This way you open the editing screen for the consumption profile - if you created a new profile you end up in the editing screen automatically.

3. In the 'Edit Consumption Profile' window, select 'Editable' for the Consumption Profile Type

What's the difference of the consumption profile types?

4. Edit the data

You have different methods to edit your consumption profile.

Remember that you need to edit the data for trading days separately from non-trading days. You can select which type of days you wish to edit in the table below from either 'trading' or 'non-trading'.

EDITING METHODS

Choose any of the editing methods convenient for you.

Note:

While creating a consumption profile - you don't have to pay attention to enter the exact consumption of your customer in here. It's much more important to define the accurate shape of the consumption profile through the day & the year. You can scale your consumption profile (simply enter the average daily consumption) while using it - see:

What is 'scaling' of consumption profiles and when should I scale a consumption profile?

4.1. Web Edit

You can specify the trading and non-trading information directly in your browser using a spreadsheet-like interface. Here you can edit each individual cell of the table to produce the consumption profile you desire.

edit individual data points,
copy and paste values (you can also paste values into this table from Microsoft Excel if you wish)
fill across or fill down (You can extend data by selecting the corner of a selected cell and dragging it across or down)

We recommend simply using the web edit method and simply copying values from a month which contains data over to a month with missing data. This allows you to fill one month woith data and pulling it across to the missing 11 month.

1. Click on the month which contains data on the very top to highlight the whole column

2. Grab the highlighted column on the bottom right corner - a little cross will pop up

3. Keep your mouse clicked while pulling the cursors to the right hand side to pull the values across and copy into the empty month.

To many numbers? Feeling like a spreadsheet full of numbers are irritating? Good news! We thought the same - and implemented a preview feature. You have the ability to convert these numbers in a visual consumption graph simply by swapping over to visual edit.

4.2. Visual Edit

You can perform visual editing of individual data points. Edit the consumption profile by dragging each node to a new value. Also here - pay attention to do it for working and non-working days separately.

If you wish to restore the consumption profile (and cancel the edits you made), you can click Restore on the bottom right hand side of the graph.

4.3. Overwrite with CSV

You can change the editing method to a third option to overwrite the currently loaded consumption profile from your own local .csv file.

Working/Non-working files must be in CSV format with a row of months along the top, and a column with an hour of day on the left. It must be in the same format as the Web Edit tables. You can also click the 'example data file' link preceding the upload sections to see what format these uploads must be in.

Note that the year/hour row/column can be in any format, or be blank, but must exist because they will be removed. Also - the first row of your CSV file must contain column headings.

Upload your .csv consumption file for trading days ('Working File')

Upload your .csv consumption file for non-trading days ('Non Working File')

5. Done! Time to use your updated profile

After editing the trading/non-trading data in the Edit Consumption Profile window, click Save changes.

This will bring you in our preview screen - allowing to review & fine tune your profile a last time before sending it over to your OpenSolar project.

If you have entered any data into the missing month - none of the colored lines should appear to be flat anymore and the calculated average daily consumption should reflect your customers annual average daily consumption accordingly.

6. Done! Push the data to your OpenSolar project

Just press the Export to OpenSolar button on the bottom right