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Getting Started

FLEX Insights helps you move from a broad customer population to specific questions about how customers use energy.

Most work in FLEX Insights follows a simple workflow:

  1. Define a population with a Segment. Select the customers you want to understand using energy usage, end uses, technology detections, property characteristics, or customer attributes.
  2. Create a Report. Add one or more Segments to a Report to analyze those populations.
  3. Explore the results. Use the different views within a Report to understand energy consumption, load patterns, end uses, and other characteristics.
  4. Compare populations. Add multiple Segments when you want to understand how one customer population differs from another.

You can return to your Segments and Reports as your questions evolve.

Step 1: Start with a question

Before creating a Segment, consider what you want to understand about your customer population.

For example:

Where is evening demand concentrated?​

You could use electricity usage characteristics to identify customers with high evening demand.

What does EV adoption and charging look like across my territory?​

You could create a population using EV detection and then analyze its charging characteristics.

How does energy use differ by customer type?​

You could use customer attributes such as sector or rate to define populations and compare their energy use.

You do not need to know exactly what you are looking for before you begin. Start with a broad population and refine it as you discover patterns worth investigating.

Step 2: Define your population

A Segment is a group of customers that meets a set of criteria.

Segments can be created using several types of information available in FLEX Insights:

Disaggregated Energy lets you define populations using estimated energy consumption from individual end uses or technologies.

End Use Detections lets you identify customers where FLEX Insights has detected particular technologies or end uses.

Electricity Usage lets you define populations using characteristics such as annual consumption, peak demand, or evening usage.

Property Attributes let you use available characteristics such as location, climate zone, or home characteristics.

Customer Attributes let you use information such as sector, rate, energy provider, or other available customer data.

You can combine criteria to create increasingly specific populations.

Step 3: Analyze the population in a Report

Once you have a Segment you want to investigate, use a Report to analyze it.

Reports provide the visualizations and metrics used to understand the energy characteristics of your selected populations.

You can move through the different views in a Report to investigate the population from different perspectives.

For example, a Segment created around high evening demand might lead you to explore its load shape, investigate the end uses contributing to that demand, or compare it with another customer population.

Step 4: Compare populations

Some questions are easier to answer by comparing populations rather than looking at one Segment in isolation.

For example, instead of asking only how customers with detected EVs use electricity, you might compare customers with detected EVs with customers without detected EV Charging.

Add the relevant Segments to a Report to see how their energy characteristics differ.

Where to go next

Now that you understand the basic FLEX Insights workflow, continue to Working With Segments. To learn how to analyze populations, and see how to visualize them in Working With Reports.