House & usage
Find the home, check the utility and rate, and enter how much electricity it uses.
- Find the houseIn the Roof section, type the customer’s address and pick it from the list. Cali-Graf places the home, finds its utility and loads Google’s roof data — then you can design the roof.
- Make sure the right house is foundBefore you trace the roof, check that the satellite view is centered on the customer’s roof and look at the date of the aerial image. A warning under the address tells you when the location or the image needs a second look.
- How the utility, rate zone and region are foundCali-Graf takes the utility from the home’s location, then the LADWP rate zone from the ZIP code, or the SCE baseline region and Clean Power Alliance from the city. All of it shows in the line under the address — check it against the customer’s bill.
- Enter usage from billsIn Usage, pick Bills and type the kWh from each bill of the last 12 months — 6 bills for LADWP, 12 for SCE. Match the dates to the customer’s bills with Edit dates. Bills give Cali-Graf the shape of the customer’s year.
- Use a yearly totalNo bills at hand? In Usage, pick Yearly total and type the kWh the home used in the last 12 months. Cali-Graf spreads it over the year the way similar Los Angeles homes use power.
- Upload a Green Button fileGreen Button is a file with the home’s usage for every hour, downloaded from the utility’s website. Upload it in Usage, under Green Button, and Cali-Graf uses the customer’s real hours instead of an estimate — the most accurate input.
- Choose the customer’s SCE rate plan and CAREFor SCE homes, pick the rate plan printed on the customer’s bill — TOU-D-4-9PM, TOU-D-5-8PM, TOU-D-PRIME or Domestic — and tick CARE if the bill has the CARE discount. They set the bill today; the bill with solar is calculated on TOU-D-PRIME.
- Enter time-of-use kWh from SCE billsSCE bills on time-of-use plans split each month’s kWh into on-peak, mid-peak, off-peak and super off-peak. Enter that split and Cali-Graf matches the customer’s own balance of expensive and cheap hours.
- Fewer than 12 months of usageCali-Graf calculates from a full year of usage. If the customer has fewer than 12 months of bills — a new owner, a new meter — enter your best estimate as a yearly total; Cali-Graf spreads it over the year like similar homes.
- Plan for future usage: EV, heat pump, ADUCali-Graf calculates from the home’s past usage and doesn’t add future loads on its own. If the customer is getting an electric car, a heat pump or an ADU, add your estimate of the extra kWh to the usage before you calculate.
- How the hourly usage profile is builtBills show monthly totals, but solar bills depend on the hour. Cali-Graf picks the 30 Los Angeles homes from NREL’s ResStock study whose year looks most like the customer’s bills, fits each to the bills, and uses their middle and range.