Meter data that finally agreed with the bills

The situation

Westvale bills 410,000 connections from three metering systems installed across two decades. Each produced its own consumption figure, and the billing engine read whichever was available first.

Customers noticed. The contact centre handled roughly 1,240 disputes a month, and investigating one meant an analyst opening three systems and reconciling by hand.

Constraints

Billing could not pause. Any change had to run in parallel with the existing engine until the regulator-facing figures matched for three consecutive cycles.

What we did

We modelled all three sources into one reconciled consumption series, with explicit rules for which reading wins and why. Where sources disagree beyond a threshold, the record is flagged rather than silently resolved.

Estimated reads were separated from actual reads in the model, which nobody had done before. That alone explained a large share of the disputes.

What changed

Disputes fell by nearly two thirds within a quarter. The more useful outcome is that an analyst investigating one now opens a single record showing every reading, its source and the rule applied.

Results

Measure	Before	After
Monthly billing disputes	1,240	450
Bills based on estimates	22%	14%
Days to investigate a dispute	9	2
Consumption series in use	3	1