Annual Reporting for Wisconsin Utilities
Introduction
Wisconsin municipal Water, Electric, Sewer (if regulated) & Gas utilities are required to submit an Annual Report to the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin (PSC-W) on their operations for the previous calendar year. These reports are generally due to the PSC on March 31 of the following year. The Annual Report is broken into various sections, and primarily provides detailed financial information about the utility. However, there are also statistical sections for reporting information on consumption, customers statistics by rate class, and the like. While much of the statistical information is related to operations rather than billing, there are several sections where the billing system is the best source of information. This article focuses on preparing reports to provide this billing-related statistical information for Electric and Water utilities to the PSC-W.
Water/Electric Metering
Schedules W-23 and E-20 of the Annual Report require the utility to provide statistics of how many meters are in service at the utility.
Water Meters
Figure 1 shows an example of the water meter counts required by the PSC-W, breaking down the change in meters counts during the year, and also the classification of meters by customer rate class. Both of these analyses should break down the totals by meter size. The change in counts from beginning to end of year can be complex to obtain, and a program such as Civic Mass Unit Manager might be a good solution for tracking those changes. The year-end classification by customer class is something that can easily be produced directly in Caselle Connect.
Figure 1. Water Meter Counts
To prepare this report, the Meter Summary Report can be run to provide the raw data. Navigate to Utility Management | Reports | Meter Summary Report. From this screen, options can be set to run the report for the correct time period (typically January 1 through December 31 of the previous year), and the services selected. If the utility has both electric and water meters, it is recommended to run this report multiple times (once for water service and once for electric services) to provide useful totals. For water meters, it is also recommended that the "Group records by" option be set to "meter size" to provide the breakdown by size required for schedule W-23. These options would typically be set as in Figure 2a. Note that the details of the options to be set are specific to the configuration of each utility. If additional assistance is needed obtaining these amounts or interpreting the reports, please contact a Civic support representative for assistance.
Figure 2a. Meter Summary Report - Water - Settings
The resulting report produced would look similar to Figure 2b. Again, the specific meter size columns and customer types are going to be specific to the Caselle configuration, but should generally map to the categories in the PSC-W Annual report.
Figure 2b. Meter Summary Report - Water - Results
Electric Meters
Figure 3 shows an example of the electric meter counts required by the PSC-W. This is similar to the water report, except that there is no reconciliation of the change in meters from beginning to end of the year, and the breakdown is by customer rate class rather than meter size. In order to produce that classification, it is recommended to set the "Group records by" option to "rate" for electric meters (Figure 4a). When run, this will provide a detailed breakdown of these meters by the rate classes (Figure 4b). Based on the rate class, it may be possible to determine the breakdown by meter type. This is also something that could be populated in the Size field on the meter record of electric meters, and then the report could more exactly match the schedule in the Annual Report.
Figure 3. Electric Meter Counts
Figure 4a. Meter Summary Report - Electric - Settings
Figure 4a. Meter Summary Report - Electric - Results
Water/Electric Customers Served
Schedules W-28 and E-21 of the Annual Report require the utility to provide the year-end customer counts by municipal area served, as in Figure 5.
Figure 5. Customer Counts
The Rate Summary report in Caselle provides a good source for these reports. To access this report, navigate to Utility Management | Reports | Rate Summary Report. This report is often run at the end of each billing period, but it is also useful for providing year-end totals. When running the report, set the following options for the year-end totals (Figure 6a):
- Report dates: Select the period date for the last billing period of the calendar year. For example, if the utility bills monthly, use dates of 12/1/yyyy through 12/31/yyyy.
- Count each customer once per period: This option should be checked to eliminate any potential duplication if the account has multiple billings or billing adjustments in the period.
- Services: The report will count customers on each rate for the selected service. As a result, care is required to only select services that will not result in the same customer being counted twice. For example, if the utility's water customers are all metered, and every customer has water metered service 1, and some (but not all) customers also have water metered service 2, it is recommended to run this report for just water metered service 1 to avoid double-counting customers.
- If the utility serves customers in multiple municipal areas, a selection criteria on the Location City might be an appropriate way to run the report by municipality.
Figure 6a. Rate Summary Report - Settings
Figure 6b. Rate Summary Report - Results
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