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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.