Requirements for uploading consumption profiles to Helios

Utility companies export their consumption data to CSVs of various shapes and sizes. The following format requirements should be met for the consumption profile being uploaded:

  • The values in each column should be seperated by a comma
  • The rows should start on a new line, commonly known as a ENTER
  • Columns names or other header rows do not need to be removed, the first line of data is automatically detected
  • The data should be formatted in 2 columns
  • The first column is the date and time (formatted like this: DD-MM-YYYY hh:mm:ss or like this D/M/YYYY hh:mm:ss)
  • The second column is the consumption in kWh formatted as a decimal number (123.99)
  • The dataset should have at least 1 value for each hour, smaller intervals are automatically detected.
  • The dataset should have at least 1 year of data
  • A maximum of 24 hours of missing data is allowed. If more data is missing the file is rejected as it is considered too sparse.

Note that some spreadsheet applications, with certain language settings, use commas as decimal separator and semi-colons as column separator when generating CSV files. As per the above requirements, these should be dots and commas, respectively.

If you need to edit a CSV to conform to the above requirements, please make sure to open the CSV in a text editor like Notepad (on Windows) or Notes (on Mac). In a text editor, you can see the plain, unformatted contents of the file. Here you can do a search-and-replace, for example to replace decimal-separating commas with dots and to replace column-separating semi-colons with commas. When you’re done, save the file and upload into Helios again.