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In order to serve you better, please select your Dominion Energy location services.
In order to serve you better, please select your Dominion Energy location services.
In order to serve you better, please select your Dominion Energy location services.
We use patented technology to analyze meter data – the same data we use to calculate your bill – to determine how much energy your major appliances consume. This is commonly called “disaggregation.” Details of this information will be provided for our residential customers after six months of usage.
Disaggregation is the process that takes the DESC usage data from your meter and identifies the individual appliance types within the home that are actually using the energy. Basically, appliances like air conditioners and electric heating leave distinct “fingerprints” in your energy use data; with the right software algorithms, usage of these appliances can be identified and estimated.
After a minimum of six months, we itemize your usage into 12 major appliance categories. You can track the usage of every single category over the course of the year and see how they change based on season, weather and your behavior. We display categories that consume a large amount of electricity, like Always On (baseload), Heating, Cooling and Pool Pump, based on the usage from your meter. We then take this usage to infer and estimate how much your other appliance categories, like laundry, cooking, lighting and entertainment, are consuming. Thus, through a combination of your actual usage and our rule-based model, we can compose a holistic picture of your total energy consumption.
Always On includes “plugged-in” devices such as personal computers, monitors, printers, stereos, and televisions that consume energy even when they're turned off.
Laundry consists of “wet washing” electric appliances, such as dishwasher, washing machine, and dryer.
Cooking and food preparation appliances that consume significant electricity can be found in this category, including oven, stove, toaster, and toaster oven.
This includes common cooling appliances such as central air conditioners, room air conditioners, heat pumps, “swamp” coolers, and mini-split air conditioners.
This category includes the aggregate usage of all Electric Vehicles at the location.
Water Heating includes all whole-home water heaters (tanked, tankless, and heat pumps) as well as specific-use water heaters (e.g. electric showers).
Entertainment is comprised of two main appliance types: consumer electronics (TV, DVR, game console, stereo) and home computing (desktop, monitor, printer, modem).
This includes all lights in the home, from efficient LED bulbs to inefficient halogen bulbs, and everything in between.
These are appliances that are too small or infrequently used to be categorized separately. This includes mobile phones, vacuum cleaners, fans, hair dryers, and curling irons.
Pool pumps have motors that keep your pool water filtered and clean year-round.
Refrigeration includes the aggregate usage of refrigerators and freezers in the home.
Electric space heating includes many different types of heaters: radiant, convection, fan, storage, underfloor, heat pumps, and the electric fan component of gas heating.
Note: Appliance usage information is available at the monthly level. It is not available at the daily level.
Please note that navigation is slightly different when viewing on a desktop versus a mobile device.
The screen defaults to show costs for the last 12 months with a place holder for the current billing month. Select the Usage link to show monthly usage. Click the Appliance link to show estimated costs at the appliance level. Click on the bar for the month and from there the day you wish to review.
The screen defaults to show the costs information for the last 12 months with a place holder for the current billing month. Use the Filter icon to retrieve options to view appliance and usage detail, as well as change the time scale from year to month to day.
After navigating to the monthly view option which will show the days of the billing period, select the day you wish to view. Click the toggle buttons to change the defaulted period.
After selecting the Cost or Usage option, select the desired Time Scale option of Year, Month, Day. When making the selection of Month or Day, the most recent Month or Day will display. Click the toggle buttons to change the defaulted period.
For residential customers, we require a minimum of six months of usage to show appliance disaggregation. As soon as your bill history reflects six months of billing details, we will provide the usage disaggregation details on the charts as well as Bill Itemization.
Appliance disaggregation is not provided for non-residential customers because of the wide variation of appliance and equipment that could be present at that location. We will continue to work with our vendor on development of more accurate presentation of usage disaggregation that may be beneficial.
Temperature represents the average of the highs and lows for the period selected.
Tier 1 equals the rate or cost associated with the first tier of the billing rate. Tier 1 for residential electric customers of billing equates to the first 800 kWh, while Tier 2 refers to the usage that occurs in excess of 800 kWhs.
“Always On” represents electricity that is used every day, constantly, throughout the month. It includes standby power, as well as electricity being used by devices such as routers, cable boxes, chargers, thermostats, security systems, and fish-tank pumps.
In these cases, the algorithm typically categorizes the appliances not detected under the “Others” category.
Some gas-based heating, such as a central furnace, consumes some electricity. In order to circulate the hot air throughout the home, all central furnaces have an electric blower, pump, or fan, which our algorithm recognizes and attributes to heating.
Yes. The algorithm detects the electric energy consumption of all types of space heaters.
It may take some time for our algorithm to learn how you tend to use energy throughout the year. Also, the algorithm is designed to take into account how a typical home uses energy as the default behavior for a given geographic region. If a specific estimation looks off to you, please update your home profile survey to indicate the exact appliances you own or provide feedback comments.
When you get notification that your new bill is ready, we are hard at work processing the enormous volume of interval data for the algorithms to produce the most accurate results. We don't like to show the message that says not yet available, but it may appear periodically. As soon all intervals have processed, we will provide the disaggregated data. That may take a few additional hours to complete after your bill amount has posted.
Green Button is a North America-wide initiative being adopted by many utilities as part of an ongoing effort to provide their customers with better access to their energy usage information. Green Button allows you to download your detailed energy usage in a secure, easy-to-use machine-readable format. You can share this file with companies who are developing innovative tools to help you understand and analyze your energy consumption.
Your Green Button information is downloaded in a standard XML file format, so you can easily export your data to other applications, tools or software. You can also continue to use the spreadsheet-friendly XLS and CSV download options, which are better options for directly reviewing the data.
The Department of Energy provides an excellent overview of the Green Button Initiative: www.energy.gov/data/green-button.
The use of Watt Hours is a standard measure of Green Button functionality. To connect this to the hourly usage that shows on the usage report, add the Watt Hours usage for the four-15 minute intervals and divide by 1,000.
Filling out your Home Profile Survey will ensure that your breakdown is a true reflection of your home, particularly if you recently bought a new appliance, or if you are finding issues with accuracy in your reports. By understanding more about your home and the appliances you own, the model will know what to look for and what not to as it works to break down your energy usage.
Yes, you should select it. Our algorithm estimates itemization based on the usage of the appliance.
Once you have filled out your Home Profile Survey, you do not need to revisit and update it on a regular basis. Consider it a way to make sure that our model is aware of any big changes to the way you use energy at home. If you bought or replaced appliances, or have new members of the family or roommates, it would be a good time to update your Home Profile Survey so that our model can most accurately estimate the consumption of the new appliance.
For every answer you provide in your “Home Profile Survey,” you are helping us further personalize your home’s energy breakdown. Prior to answering any questions, the itemization values were based on what a typical home in your region is like. With each answer you provide, you are improving the accuracy of the model.
The type of home helps the model more accurately estimate the usage pattern of different appliances in a home, as the typical Detached Home has a different energy consumption profile than that of an Apartment or a townhome.
Please mark “Yes” to both cooktop and oven in your “Home Profile Survey.”
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