EnergyCAP Blog

Webster’s dictionary defines stewardship as, “the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one’s care.” As an adoptive parent, I can understand stewardship. Bringing a child who once belonged to different parents into your home is an act of stewardship. In fact, before the adoption is finalized and before you become the legal parent of the child, you’re called the child’s “steward.” You’ve been entrusted to care for a person which is not yet your own.

We've all been in this situation before. Your supervisor asks you to step into her office, or your boss sets up an unexpected lunch meeting. All of the sudden, you're in an unwelcome feedback situation. Something has gone wrong and you're not sure how to respond. What do you do?

I used to keep my email inbox open all the time while working. One monitor displayed my active project—a spreadsheet, document or web browser—while the other monitor displayed my inbox. This way I could stay on top of everything at the same time. I was king of the world. But then a coworker suggested I didn’t have to work with an open inbox. At first I didn’t trust him. It seemed unproductive, irresponsible, and rude. But one day curiosity got the better of me, and I closed my inbox. I liked it so much that now I always close my email during focused tasks. I think you will, too. Here are four quick reasons why:

Unfortunately, sometimes just saving isn't enough. Good planning, like budgeting, is essential. This little girl didn't budget correctly, and the result was, well, disappointing. Watch what happens. 

Probably at some point, someone has asked if you've seen the latest TED talk on so-and-so. The first time that happened to me, I was like, "Ted said what?" But since then, I've become a fan of the 18-minute talks that spread ideas on technology, entertainment, and design (that's where the name TED comes from). So if you're looking to be educated, challenged, or even inspired in your work, here's a countdown of the ten most popular TED talks on energy.

We recently presented a webinar with Lucid Design Group on the relationship between real-time metering and utility bill data–and the savings opportunities they deliver. The webinar produced some good questions from the audience, and we're sharing the answers in today's blog.

Last week I attended a live presentation by bestselling author and TED talk speaker Dr. Brené Brown. Her 2010 Ted talk, “The power of vulnerability,” is one of the top five most viewed TED talks ever, with more than 21 million views. But last week she didn’t talk about vulnerability; instead she spoke about having emotional courage in the workplace. In this blog post, I’d like to share some takeaways from her talk. Before you roll your eyes and “get back to work,” stay with me. Emotional courage is needed at work. But first, a story.

Ever since we started helping organizations track their utility bills 35 years ago, we've noticed two paths that organizations frequently travel on the road to energy management success. We focused on one of those paths in an earlier blog (the path of utility bill processing maturity). Today we’ll focus on the path of energy management maturity. Like any path, it has a starting point, and a destination, with landmarks along the way. We’ve captured that path in an infographic, and are sharing it in this blog.  

The Kroger Company is the largest grocery retailer and the 23rd largest company in the United States. With $100 billion/year in revenue, Kroger has been serving shoppers for 131 years. But Kroger doesn't just serve up tomatoes and squash. (Photo courtesy of www.mydaytondailynews.com) Kroger has served up almost 35% in energy reductions compared to its baseline year in 2000. How have they done it?

In our 35 years of helping organizations track their utility bills, we've seen all kinds of utility bill processes. Some have been complex, while some have been simple. Some have interfaced with external systems, while some have kept to themselves. Some have been free, while some have been paid. Drawing on our experience, we created the Utility Bill Processing infographic. Where does your organization fit in?

Great news! We’ve totally redesigned EnergyCAP.com to better serve our website visitors. While there are many things I like—no love—about our new website, I'll highlight my seven favorite things:

Among our blog audience, there are readers who are absolutely head-over-heels-in love with managing energy. They think energy, they speak energy, and they have cute energy quotes in their email signatures. But not all of our blog readers are passionate about managing energy. Can they still be successful in the energy management industry? Or is passion absolutely essential for energy managers?

Loudoun County Public Schools is one of the fastest growing school districts in the nation. Located near Washington, DC, they serve 70,000 students. But energy use and cost have not been keeping pace with enrollment. As a result of their 20-year energy management program, energy managers at Loudoun County Public Schools have documented $58 million in avoided energy costs. How have they done this? Watch this short video from this year's Catalyst Training Conference and find out.

The most interesting castle in Ireland has something in common with our newest EnergyCAP clients. See if you can guess what it is. If you visit the Castle Ward House in northern Ireland, you'll find an intriguing building.

Meter interval data can be useful for a variety of reasons. How many reasons can you think of?  In this 5-minute video from the 2015 Catalyst Training Conference, Steve Heinz shares 12 value streams of obtaining meter interval data for effective energy management.

I was recently in the Philippines to speak at some conferences and set up student sponsorships. Although the purpose of my trip was not work-related, the subject of energy was on my mind. I suppose that’s not surprising when energy management software is the family business. Here are three lessons about energy from my trip to the Philippines.

About 120 EnergyCAP users from North America recently gathered for the Catalyst Training Conference for hands-on training, networking with other users, one-on-one meetings with staff, new feature demos, and fun social events. In case you missed it, here are some highlights, including the Catalyst Spoof video:

"What advice would you give to an energy manager on his or her first day?" We asked this question to five EnergyCAP users, each from a different organization. Let's see what advice they would give to an energy manager on the first day.

By overcoming three major challenges, Miami-Dade County revived an energy management program burdened by outdated and inefficient processes. In this post, we discuss one of the challenges the County overcame—its troubled utility bill review and payment process.

At EnergyCAP, we’re always looking for ways to help you succeed in energy management. One of the ways we do this is through publishing ebooks. Our growing ebook library covers a variety of topics from finding energy savings to benchmarking your energy data to analyzing weather data. What ebooks are the most popular? In this post, we count down the top ten most-downloaded EnergyCAP ebooks:

An email marketing company called Aweber studied millions of email subject lines and discovered the most successful subject line ever. This email subject line delivered stellar results—an average email open rate of 90%! That means 9 out of 10 people who received an email with that subject line opened it. Those of us in the email marketing industry know an open rate of 90% is almost unheard of, since average email open rates are more like 23%. So what is the most successful email subject line ever?

If you haven’t been professionally trained in giving great presentations, you can still give professional presentations. Like Russian nesting dolls, great presentations have parts that fit together...but only in the right order. For your next presentation, remember these indispensable parts.

EnergyCAP, Inc. is based on Christian business principles, and we have a company chaplain. In addition to leading our marketing department, I stepped into the chaplain position in 2015. Today’s blog comes from me as the company chaplain. You know, life’s unpredictable. You don’t know what’s going to happen. I didn’t know that when I was 21, I would suffer with depression and be hospitalized. And a few years later, after our daughter was born, I didn’t know that we would deal with infertility – the doctors would say we couldn’t have any more children. That led us to adopt our two boys. I didn’t know how parenting two traumatized boys who had never known a father would be. And I didn’t know that at 36, I would get a blood clot in my lung, which would challenge any concept that I was really in control of my life. Yeah, life has been pretty unpredictable. But do you know what was constant in those dark, uncertain times?

As the confetti settles from New Year celebrations and party hats are put away, we'd like to offer a top ten blog countdown. In 2014, we published 89 blog posts. Which posts were most popular? Let's find out as we count down the top blog posts of 2014.

Here's good news for 2015—EnergyCAP is hiring! We’re looking to fill two important positions on our Implementation Solutions team. This department works with clients to implement EnergyCAP at their organization. EnergyCAP users are great candidates because they’re familiar with the software and have gone through the implementation process already. While we’re not looking to steal talent from anyone, we realize that sometimes a better fit with a different organization benefits all the parties involved. We also realize that our blog network is part of a much larger network, so please forward this information to friends or colleagues who might be interested! Here are the two job openings:

Increasingly, energy managers must present ideas to groups of people. Whether it’s proving return on investment for an upcoming purchase, sharing the results of an energy efficiency project, or enlisting coworkers to conserve energy, these ideas are important.  Images of all types are valuable for communicating meaning and adding clarity to a presentation. A picture is worth a thousand words (cliché alert!), but few energy management professionals have been trained in maximizing the visual impact of presentations. Today's blog offers suggestions for avoiding clichés in your presentation visuals.

It’s an exciting time to be an energy manager! As more organizations buy into sustainability and energy stewardship as a core component of their business model, opportunities will continue to multiply. But regardless of the situation, there will be certain common challenges. Here are five common problems that energy managers will continue to face:

Utility bill processing can be a lot like competitive swimming. There's hard work and boring repetition and occasionally something exciting happens. At one of my first meets as a competitive swimmer, my coach entered me in the backstroke event. The gun went off and I began paddling on my back toward the other end of the pool. But no pool goes on forever and soon came the wall. The idea is to see the flags and begin counting your strokes and at the right time, turn over into a turn, push off the wall, and start another lap, all the while maintaining your speed. Usually it goes off without a hitch, but not this time.

Today we take a moment to reflect on the event that changed us 13 years ago. I visited the 9/11 Memorial. After walking through security like I was boarding a plane, I entered the courtyard. I arrived in a group, but broke off on my own. I felt I should walk this memorial alone. Two great pools of water sat in the courtyard. Water poured down one level, creating soft walls. Then it poured down a second level and into a hole, the bottom unseen. Each pool is where the buildings belonged, those buildings now crumbled and gone.