Report vs. Widget Discrepancies

This discussion is intended to be about the new web application for EKM Push users at http://www.encompass.io that has been beta released. Use this discussion to talk about your experiences with Encompass, including what works, what doesn't, and what could be added or improved.
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bandtank
Posts: 16
Joined: Fri Mar 08, 2019 8:43 am

Report vs. Widget Discrepancies

Post by bandtank »

I am seeing discrepancies between widget and report values. The calendar widget, which aggregates monthly usage, shows a monthly total that does not match the monthly total the associated report. Here are some examples:

From the widgets on the website:
  • October = 153.24 kWh
  • November = 303.1 kWh
However, the report shows different values:
  • October = 140.3 kWh
  • November = 303.7 kWh
There are two issues that I've seen so far. The first is that the report does not always include the correct number of days when calculating the total for the previous month. October has 31 days, but only 30 are included in the report even though I have it set to the 1st through the 31st. It appears to be using the last day of the current month in the query even if the previous month has more days. The second issue is that the values are slightly off even if the correct number of days are used (303.1 vs. 303.7 kWh for November as an example).

I have seen both behaviors on multiple reports and widgets including electric and water meters from two Omnimeter V4s.
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Jameson
Posts: 860
Joined: Fri Nov 04, 2011 7:42 pm
Location: Santa Cruz, CA
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Re: Report vs. Widget Discrepancies

Post by Jameson »

Yes I can see what you are saying about November, it looks like the data in encompass is correct. The data in your report is off by 0.6 kWh for some reason (I would guess it has something to do with the timezone shift, meaning a month in your timezone will be just slightly different than a month in the wrong timezone). We should be able to get to the bottom of this and sort it out pretty quickly.

As for October, it is off by quite a bit more. Encompass is also correct in this case. The report is off because like you say, the report is dropping the last day of the month. This started from a desire to compare one month to the previous month. But if one month has 30 days and the next month has 31 days, you could either compare 30 days to 31 days or 30 days to 30 days. If you compare 30 to 31, then the months with more days will always look like higher consumers of electricity. If you compare 30 to 30 then you have the issue of dropping a day. There is no perfect solution to this. We are leaning toward comparing 30 days to 31 days in this case. Maybe adding something like a kWh per day value, which could be a good idea. Let us know which you think would be a better comparison to use.

If you ever really want to look at the data behind the scenes that we are using with your meter, it would be best to go to the source and look at the Summary API data for your meters. Here is a link to the Summary API data section of out Developer Portal: https://documents.ekmmetering.com/api-d ... ummary-api

And please by all means always point out issues you are seeing and improvements you want, we are making these tools for you :ugeek:
Jameson
EKM METERING
http://www.ekmmetering.com
831.425.7371
bandtank
Posts: 16
Joined: Fri Mar 08, 2019 8:43 am

Re: Report vs. Widget Discrepancies

Post by bandtank »

I see what you mean regarding the comparison periods. Interesting.

I think a kWh per day metric would be the most straightforward solution since that's arguably what you are really comparing when it comes to long periods of time. The total is relevant in other contexts, so having both would be helpful. With that said, leaving days off of a period is not an intuitive behavior and I didn't notice that October ended on the 30th until I had been confused for a few days. I would argue that the day boundaries should be handled in the most intuitive way even if it means sacrificing the ability to make exact comparisons in other places. I agree there is no perfect solution.

I have some broader feedback regarding reports, timezones, and other Encompass features that I will post in a different thread.
bandtank
Posts: 16
Joined: Fri Mar 08, 2019 8:43 am

Re: Report vs. Widget Discrepancies

Post by bandtank »

I'm seeing a different issue between the Comparison Chart widget and the report. On the widget, the graphs appear to match the data, but the report shows a very different set of charts. See below.

This chart is from a report that covers 12/1/19-12/31/19 vs 1/1/20-1/31/20.
report.png
report.png (16.7 KiB) Viewed 24092 times

Here is the widget that covers the same time period for the same meter.
widget.png
widget.png (17.8 KiB) Viewed 24092 times

It looks kinda similar for January, but December isn't even close. Maybe the first day of December is different because of the timezone, but I think there's a lot more going on, which should be obvious based on the other differences. The report colors also don't match the legend, but the widget appears to be correct.

My experience has been that the widgets are typically more correct than the reports. The data I get from reports is untrustworthy and I am starting to not use that feature as a result. Not being able to pick a timezone has caused some issues as well with my tenants since they have access to the physical meters and they've accused me of making rounding errors in my favor. Once I went through the hassle downloading the data directly and showing it to them, they calmed down, but it's still a problem that could have been avoided.

The reports also take a long time to send. One of my tenants needs the report on the first day of the month, but the automatically generated report doesn't show up until the second day of the month, so I have to manually generate it. There's no setting for the day the report is generated.
Jameson
Posts: 860
Joined: Fri Nov 04, 2011 7:42 pm
Location: Santa Cruz, CA
Contact:

Re: Report vs. Widget Discrepancies

Post by Jameson »

Hello bandtank,

Thank you very much for bringing this to our attention. We would like to see the full pdf report that you are comparing the dash widget to. It does look like something strange is going on. Would you be willing to email us the full pdf report so that we can check it out? Please email it to support@ekmmetering.com

Sorry that you are seeing this issue, hopefully we can get it sorted in encompass.io very soon.

Yeah it can take quite a while for the encompass back end to generate all of the necessary pdf reports and email them out to all customers. You are right that this is not ideal, but there are just so many (particularly at the first of the month) that it creates quite a backlog. We are always working to improve encompass, reports and billing have been our main focuses of late. Please keep checking in to see if the improvements are working for you.
Jameson
EKM METERING
http://www.ekmmetering.com
831.425.7371
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