The third step
ValidationThe first step in VEE - automated checks of metering data against technical and logical limits to detect obviously erroneous values. catches the obvious. EstimationThe second step in VEE - calculation of missing or rejected metering values based on historical patterns, neighbouring meters or statistical models. fills the gaps. Then there is a remainder, and it is always there: values that are not obviously wrong, not missing, but still not right.
A meter exchange that was not registered properly. A period read twice. A value belonging to a different metering pointThe fundamental unit in Elhub - the unique point in the electricity network where energy is measured and settled, identified by an 18-digit GSRN number.. None of that is solved by a rule, because there is nothing wrong with the number itself. What is wrong is where it sits.
So it gets corrected by hand. That is the third step of VEEValidation, Estimation, Editing - systematic process to ensure quality of raw metering data from electricity meters., and it is the step that separates a system you can trust from a system that merely looks tidy.
The spreadsheet beside it is where the trail dies
The most common way to do this work is to export the data, fix it in a spreadsheet, and load it back in.
It works. The value ends up right. And everything about why it was changed disappears in the same movement: who did it, when, on what basis, and what stood there before.
That is why editingThe third step in VEE - manual correction of metering values that cannot be resolved automatically, with full audit trail for all changes. belongs inside the same workflow as the rest, not in a tool beside it. Not because it is more efficient, but because the change then lands in the trail together with everything else done to the series. A spreadsheet has no audit log, and a copy of data has no memory of the original.
The old value must remain
Metering data is not stored as a table that gets overwritten. It is stored as versioned time seriesMeasurements of the same quantity repeated over time. The order and the timestamp are part of the data, not decoration..
The difference is not technical decoration. In a table that gets overwritten there is only the latest truth, and the question "what stood here before" has no answer. In a versioned series, every validationThe first step in VEE - automated checks of metering data against technical and logical limits to detect obviously erroneous values., every estimationThe second step in VEE - calculation of missing or rejected metering values based on historical patterns, neighbouring meters or statistical models. and every edit lands in an audit trail: who changed what, when and why. The value as it stood before the change remains.
This is what allows a deviation to be explained afterwards rather than defended. The settlementTurning metering data into money. Consumption and production per metering point become what each party owes or is owed. was done on what was known that day. The correction came later. Both are true at once, and a versioned series can show both.
Exceptions over review
With all of this in place, the working day changes in a way worth describing.
Series that pass every rule move on without anyone looking at them. What stops stands out as an exception for someone to decide on.
That sounds obvious, and it is not. The alternative, a human reviewing everything, is still common, and it is a poor use of the only resource that can actually judge anything. A human looking at ten thousand values is not looking properly at any of them. A human looking at twelve exceptions is looking at twelve exceptions.
The point of automation is not that the machine makes the decision. It is that the machine decides what is worth making a decision about.
What an audit actually asks
Finally: it is easy to assume an audit asks whether the numbers are right. It almost never does, because it cannot know.
It asks something else:
Who changed this value? Not which system, but which person or which rule.
When was it changed, relative to when it was used? A correction before settlementTurning metering data into money. Consumption and production per metering point become what each party owes or is owed. and a correction after are two entirely different matters.
What stood here before? Without this, all the other answers are assertions.
Why was it changed? The justification is the only part a system cannot produce by itself. It has to be written by whoever made the change, at the moment the change was made, and that is why the workflow has to make it easy to write.
A system that can answer all four turns an audit into a printout. A system that cannot turns it into a project.
Where we have built it
This is the reason SEFTATvimenning’s VEE engine: validates, estimates and edits metering series with versioned time series and a full audit trail, before data goes to Elhub. exists. EditingThe third step in VEE - manual correction of metering values that cannot be resolved automatically, with full audit trail for all changes. happens inside the same workflow as validationThe first step in VEE - automated checks of metering data against technical and logical limits to detect obviously erroneous values. and estimationThe second step in VEE - calculation of missing or rejected metering values based on historical patterns, neighbouring meters or statistical models., not in a spreadsheet beside it. Metering data is stored as versioned time seriesMeasurements of the same quantity repeated over time. The order and the timestamp are part of the data, not decoration., so every change lands in an audit trail with who, what, when and why, and the value as it stood before remains. Series that pass every rule move on unseen, and what stops stands out as an exception.
Two boundaries belong here. SEFTATvimenning’s VEE engine: validates, estimates and edits metering series with versioned time series and a full audit trail, before data goes to Elhub. sends no messages. The engine delivers finished validated and estimated series, and the exchange towards ElhubNational hub for metering data and market processes in the Norwegian electricity market. belongs in the integration layer SAMTYGDTvimenning platform for Elhub integration - handles all message types and processes to Elhub.. And SEFTATvimenning’s VEE engine: validates, estimates and edits metering series with versioned time series and a full audit trail, before data goes to Elhub. is verified against simulated market interfaces, not in production at a customer yet.
We write that last part every time, because a VEEValidation, Estimation, Editing - systematic process to ensure quality of raw metering data from electricity meters. system claiming more than it can show is exactly the kind of claim this article is about being able to check.