- Author
- Petersen, S. R.
- Title
- ERATES: A Computer Program for Calculating Time-of-Use, Block, and Demand Charges for Electricity Usage (Version 1.2). User's Guide and Reference Manual. 1997 Edition.
- Coporate
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD
- Sponsor
- Federal Emergency Management Agency, Washington, DC
- Report
- NISTIR 5186; 1997 Edition, January 1997, 49 p.
- Distribution
- Available from National Technical Information Service
- Keywords
- computer programs | manuals | electricity rates | costs | time of use | block rate | demand rate
- Abstract
- ERATES (Electricity Rates) is a computer program for calculating monthly and annual electricity costs for a facility, building, or system under a variety of electricity rate schedules. Both kWh usage and kW demand charges can be included in these costs. Most typically these calculations will be used to support engineering-economic studies which assess the cost-effectiveness of energy conservation measures or measures to shift electricity use from on-peak to off-peak time periods. With ERATES a user can create time-of-use kWh price schedules, block-rate kWh price schedules, and demand-rate schedules and save these schedules to a disk file. The user can then compute monthly and annual electricity costs with ERATES, given hourly or monthly kWh usage and kW demand data for a facility, building, or system. ERATES is a menu-driven, interactive program, designed to be run on an IBM-PC or compatible microcomputer under DOS version 3.0 or higher. ERATES block-rate kWh price schedules and demand-rate schedules can be imported by the NIST BLCC computer program for use in computing the life-cycle cost of buildings and building systems. ERATES is not intended for use by utilities in setting up or administering electric rate schedules.