Aggregate Utility Billing via Financial Institution Integration
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Solution Overview
Problem
The traditional utility billing and payment system is costly and inefficient for both utility companies and financial institutions, as it involves generating individualized bills, processing separate payments, and incurring various fees.
Innovation Solution
A method and system where a financial institution receives utility usage information from smart meters, aggregates the data to determine utility account balances, and sends a stop signal to cut off utility provision if the balance exceeds a permitted past due amount, thereby eliminating the need for individual billing and collection.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If individualized bills are generated and processed for each customer, then payment collection is achieved, but processing costs and operational complexity increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges individual customer billing and payment processing into a single aggregate billing process. Instead of generating separate bills for each customer, the system consolidates utility usage data from multiple customers and generates one aggregate bill that is paid once, eliminating the need for individual bill generation and separate payment processing for each customer.
Solution Approach 2:
The aggregate bill serves multiple functions simultaneously: it bills multiple customers, consolidates payment processing, and simplifies collection. A single billing document and payment transaction handle what would traditionally require numerous individual billing cycles and payment processing operations across different customers and accounts.
2Loss of information
If separate payments are processed for each customer, then individual account billing is maintained, but transaction fees and processing time increase
Solution Approach 1:
Multiple individual payment transactions are merged into a single aggregate payment transaction. The system consolidates payments from multiple customers into one transaction that settles all individual account balances simultaneously, reducing the number of transactions from many separate payments to a single payment event.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary aggregation of utility usage data and account balance calculations before generating the aggregate bill. By pre-consolidating the data and calculating total amounts due in advance, the system eliminates the need for sequential processing of individual accounts during the payment phase, significantly reducing processing time.
3Ease of operation
If traditional billing processes are used, then individual customer accounts are managed, but operational costs and resource requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple individual account management operations into a single aggregate billing process. Instead of managing each customer account separately through individual billing cycles, the system consolidates account management tasks into one unified process that handles multiple accounts simultaneously, reducing operational overhead and resource requirements.
Data Source
AI summary
Controlling provision of a set of utilities by a financial institution. The method includes receiving, by a processor of a financial institution computing system associated with a financial institution, utility usage information from a set of utility meters associated with a plurality of customers of the utility company. The method includes determining a utility account balance for a customer of the plurality of customers based at least in part by an aggregate amount of utility usage used by the plurality of customers for a billing cycle by aggregating the received utility usage information for the billing cycle. The method includes determining that the utility account balance exceeds a threshold permitted past due amount. The method includes sending a stop signal to a utility meter associated with the customer, the stop signal instructing the utility meter to cut off provision of the utility to a property serviced by the utility meter.