Onboard Overview

The first step in your Leap-powered grid services program is to onboard your customer’s devices or utility meters to the Leap platform. This will result in a unique Leap meter ID that will be used going forward to track their program enrollment and participation. The method for onboarding these assets depends on the program type:

• Utility Authorization - Customer must authorize utility meter to enroll
• Direct Enroll - Partner can directly submit enrollment data to Leap

For both program types, you can associate a partner reference ID (refId or partner_reference) to the Leap meter ID so you can more easily correlate each Leap meter to the customer and devices in your systems. See the 'Partner Reference ID Considerations' section below for more details.

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Launch Best Practice

Plan and launch all programs within each Utility Authorization and Direct Enroll program type together for greatest efficiency. This streamlines work to enroll and participate customer assets by consolidating Marketing, Technical, and Operations activities.

Utility Authorization Programs

These programs require customer utility authorization and/or agreements in order to enroll. Leap Connect makes it easy for partners to embed a branded URL into enrollment workflows for customers to complete this process.

Utility authorization programs in the table below are all utility meter programs and use interval data from the residential or commercial utility meter for event performance calculations. Customer authorization via Leap Connect gives Leap access to energy usage interval data in order to calculate event performance and settlements. After a customer completes the Leap Connect utility authorization, Leap generally receives meter data from the utility within 1-2 days, at which point Leap will automatically create a new Leap meter on the platform.

See the Utility Authorization guide for an overview of connecting meters via Leap Connect.

Direct Enroll Programs

Direct enrollment programs do not require utility authorization and therefore support simple opt-in campaigns or auto-enrollment (with option to opt-out) campaigns. To enroll customers, partners only need to submit required enrollment data to Leap.

Meter Type in the table below indicates the asset type enrolled in these programs and where performance is measured. Interval Source indicates who is responsible for providing interval data so Leap can calculate performance and settlements. Device programs require partner's to upload device interval or runtime data to Leap.

See the Direct Enroll guide for meter onboarding steps.

*These device programs can also support utility meters but they would still require interval data to be supplied by the partner and the Direct Enroll program automation use cases would still apply.

**Texas ERS meters can also be onboarded via Leap Connect if customer address needs to be collected.

Partner Reference ID Considerations

Defining Reference IDs

This is a partner-defined value that you use internally in your systems to identify a customer, site, and/or device. Depending on the meter_type (shown in the tables above as well as in the Portal and Meters API), your partner reference ID format may change.

• For Utility Meter type programs - The partner_reference should be the CustomerID or SiteID you use to identify that customer site. NOTE: C&I partners should refer to the callout in blue below.
• For Device type programs - The partner_reference should be the DeviceID you use to identify that customer device. Alternatively, you could prepend customer or site IDs to this device ID (e.g. CustomerSiteID-DeviceID).

Setting Reference IDs

Utility Authorization Programs

• You need to append this reference ID value in the refId query parameter of the Leap Connect URL.
  • NOTE: for size and character restrictions, see the Leap Connect guide.
  • NOTE: if you do not include a refId or the customer authorizes multiple utility meters with the same Leap Connect URL (and therefore same refId), once the Leap meter is created you can set or update it's partner_reference value using the endpoints in the 'Updating Reference IDs' section below.
• Generally within 1-2 days after the customer authorizes the meter(s) with this Leap Connect URL, the utility will start sharing data with Leap, at which point Leap creates a unique Leap meter_id for each utility meter authorized. The refId value in the Leap Connect URL that was used to authorize the meter will be associated with each applicable Leap meter_id.

Direct Enroll Programs

• You must submit a unique partner_reference value with each asset you are uploading via Portal or API.

Viewing Reference IDs

In both Utility Authorization and Direct Enroll programs types above, when the Leap meter_id is created, this partner reference ID value is stored in the partner_reference field in both the Portal and the Meters API endpoints.

Updating Reference IDs

If you need to set or change the partner reference ID value for any reason, you can do so through the Portal (see Partner Reference ID guide) or the following endpoints:

• Update reference ID on a single meter
• Update reference ID in bulk for a group of meters

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C&I Considerations

For Utility Authorization Programs via Leap Connect:

• For customers with multiple sites within a region, you will provide the customer a single Leap Connect URL per region (e.g. CA, NY, PJM) and that URL will have a single refId value (e.g. CustomerID) in the query string.
• Customers will then authorize all of their utility meters in that region. Once the utility starts sharing data with Leap, a unique Leap meter_id will be created for each and all of these meters will have the same partner_reference value.
• At this point, you could have an automated process to determine building/site ID via Leap based on address and/or utility account number and then update partner refID to make it unique (e.g. CustomerID-SiteID).

For Direct Enroll (Utility Meter) Programs:

• Submit partner_reference using something similar to CustomerID-SiteID format.

For Direct Enroll (Device) Programs:

• Submit partner_reference using something similar to CustomerID-SiteID-DeviceID format.

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Additional Considerations for Utility Meters vs. Devices

There are some additional differences to be aware of when processing Leap meters for assets in utility meter programs vs. device programs. Check out the Utility Meters vs. Devices guide for more details.