EnergyCAP’s inaugural Regional Training Conference (RTC) wrapped up yesterday in Irvine, CA. Feedback from those in attendance—EnergyCAP users from across the U.S.—was extremely positive, and EnergyCAP Version 7 received rave reviews.

Bithgroup Technologies, a consulting firm based in Baltimore, MD, has used EnergyCAP as the foundation of their Energy Information Services operation since 2007. They have processed hundreds of thousands of utility bills through the application. Corey Culbreath, Bithgroup’s hands-on Director of Energy Information Services, recently shared how he identified a major client billing problem without having to run a single EnergyCAP report.

So much data, so little time. An all-too-common scenario for energy managers.

Utility bills arrive like clockwork (you hope) every month by the dozens or hundreds. Each one contains numerous line items, providing useful details about facility energy consumption and cost. Ideally, that valuable information is being tracked in EnergyCAP, where it’s readily available for analysis. 

Chargebacks (aka, Allocations, Re-billings, Distributions): The process by which energy provided to one organization is then allocated across multiple other departments or facilities. In practice, the organization’s Accounting or Facilities Department acts as the internal energy “vendor” for the rest of the campus, which may be a college or university, or it could be a hospital, prison, resort, industrial complex, or any shared facility configuration.

“Providing for every contingency possible in a network like this, serving more than 65 million nodes, it’s a large and nasty problem. And it is one that has to be solved every ten minutes.”

That’s how Uday V. Shanbag, Associate Professor in Penn State University’s Department of Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering, described the challenge facing a team of Penn State researchers

EnergyCAP, Inc. (ECI) recently surveyed large government and public institutions to determine what makes an Energy Management Information System (EMIS) successful over many years. Survey participants included a mix of city and county governments, federal agencies, and the largest U.S. higher education systems. The results provide interesting insights into the objectives for implementing an EMIS and the keys to long-term program success.

On- and off-campus student housing facilities consume a lot of energy, and the cost of that energy directly impacts students, schools, and property owners. In a recent EnergyCAP-hosted webinar, Melissa Kline, Founder of environmental consulting firm IMPACTenergy, described the process her firm uses to achieve energy savings in student housing.

Can a wearable device generate its own power? Will we see a time when gas stations are scarce? What is a microgrid?

“Be a hero!”

That was the message from Steve Heinz, EnergyCAP, Inc. Founder & CEO, as he delivered the closing keynote address at the 2018 EnergyCAP Catalyst training conference. This year’s conference theme was “Change is Coming,” and Steve’s presentation armed the 200 conference attendees with five specific operational and organizational changes they could implement to deliver immediate and long-term energy and cost savings:

The Environment Protection Agency (EPA) has announced that it will soon be updating performance metrics in its Portfolio Manager application, and per the EPA, “1–100 ENERGY STAR scores and other performance metrics will, on average, go down.”

Equipment retrofits are complicated, expensive, and can take months or years to implement, but behavioral changes produce immediate energy and monetary savings.

In a recent EnergyCAP-hosted webinar, Matthew Cherrin, Energy Conservation Educator at University of New Mexico (UNM) described the behavior-based process used by UNM to achieve energy conservation success over the past decade.

Okay, that’s fake news. He didn’t say exactly that. But he did issue an Executive Order mandating deeper efforts to achieve energy cost and usage reductions, built on a foundation of energy tracking and reporting. 

Dan Coogan, Utilities Superintendent at Miami-Dade County, has been analyzing the county’s 4,500 monthly electric bills in EnergyCAP since 2012. The county has documented many energy management successes over the past five-plus years, the latest of which came as the result of a team effort.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released its 2018 ENERGY STAR Top Cities list, and 12 of the top 25 cities are EnergyCAP users. In 2017, more than 9,400 properties received ENERGY STAR benchmark scores via EnergyCAP’s interface to Portfolio Manager, the EPA’s benchmarking application.

Energy management at Riverside County, CA is in very capable hands.

During her tenure at the county, Janet Purchase, County Energy Manager, and her team have realized more than $11.6 million in grants, rebates, energy savings, outside utility funding, and avoided costs. 

“The next generation of EnergyCAP—EnergyCAP Version 7—is now available.”

Battery. Conductor. Condenser. Charge.

Those words were coined by the City of Philadelphia’s most famous resident, Benjamin Franklin, as he established himself as the leader in the study of electricity in the mid-1700s. Franklin most likely never imagined that, more than 265 years later, the city he called home would still be an energy management leader. But, while Franklin sought to understand and harness the power of electricity, the city’s primary focus today is on energy conservation.

ENERGY STAR^® is the nation’s most widely used and recognized energy reporting and benchmarking system, but it is seldom considered to be a method of measurement and verification (M&V) of savings. EnergyCAP, Inc.’s CEO, Steve Heinz, recently led a study to determine if ENERGY STAR ratings can be used as a low-cost, simple M&V method when the cost of a more intensive analysis is not justified. Steve presented the results of his study at the most recent World Energy Engineering Congress in Atlanta, GA.

Over the past few weeks, we have all watched with trepidation the major weather events and natural disasters impacting the U.S. and other countries, and our wishes for safety and quick recovery go out to all who have been directly or indirectly impacted. 

Since 2009, EnergyCAP, Inc.’s non-profit organization, Global Capacity, has played an active role in helping the African country of Rwanda achieve its national education mission:

• To combat ignorance and illiteracy
• To provide human resources useful for socio-economic development of Rwanda through education & training

The energy industry’s trade show season is about to kick off, and EnergyCAP is an eager participant. We will be exhibiting at two major industry trade shows in August and September, and we encourage you to visit with us:

The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) recently released its 2017 City Energy Efficiency Scorecard, and we are happy to report that nearly one third of the top-performing cities rely on EnergyCAP for utility bill and energy management. (i)

A large number of facilities with widely varied uses—administration, classroom, laboratories, athletics, parking, medical, etc.—a diverse group of occupants, long operating hours, multiple funding sources, and consistent growth combine to make energy management at a large public university a complex undertaking. Lalit Agarwal, Director of Facilities Systems at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), recently presented a webinar titled “The Ins and Outs of Campus Energy Data” to explain how UNL has integrated numerous systems—including EnergyCAP—and internal teams to establish a program that is successfully reducing energy consumption across campus, while maintaining occupant comfort.

On December 12, 2015, representatives of 196 parties within the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiated the Paris Climate Agreement. [i]  Article 2 of the UNFCC agreement outlined its objectives:

“Productivity Unleashed” was the theme of last month’s Catalyst Training for Savings Conference, and EnergyCAP, Inc. CEO Steve Heinz closed the conference with a keynote titled “10 Tips to Unleash Your Productivity.”  We shared tips 6–10 in our April 19^th blog, and now the suspense is over. The top five tips are presented below.

That’s a wrap! 

The 2017 edition of EnergyCAP’s Catalyst Training for Savings Conference came to a successful conclusion Thursday, April 13. And 100 EnergyCAP users–representing a wide range of organization types and sizes–departed State College, PA with an expanded arsenal of utility bill and energy management skills.

The term “Software as a Service” and its more commonly used acronym, SaaS, were originally coined in 2001 in an article published by the Software & Information Industry Association’s eBusiness Division.[i]  SaaS is simply defined as software rental, with the licensee typically paying a monthly or annual fee for the right to use a vendor-hosted application.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) introduced the ENERGY STAR program in 1992 and described it as “a voluntary labeling program designed to identify and promote energy-efficient products to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”[i] Over the past 25 years, the ENERGY STAR label – recognized by more than 90% of Americans – has progressed from computers and monitors to most major appliances and office equipment, lighting, homes, and commercial and industrial facilities. 

Success is commonly defined as “the accomplishment of an aim or purpose.”

When setting about to purchase an energy management information system (EMIS), the publicly stated purpose is commonly to reduce energy consumption. It’s a realistic, positive aim and an objective that typically garners internal and external support. That said, what ultimately “sells” the EMIS project is cost savings.

“A new year, a new me.”

It’s a phrase I’ve heard numerous times over the past three weeks, and I witness vigorous attempts to live up to the cliché every January when I walk into my local fitness facility. Of course, by February, the traffic has gotten back to “normal.”