Obstacles can either break you or make you better. Take Miami-Dade County, for instance.

Home to 2.5 million residents, the County’s building portfolio—more than 1,500 facilities—is complex and constantly changing. It includes the County’s top two sources of revenue, the Miami International Airport and PortMiami. Other public service facilities under active energy management include 70 fire stations, 100 parks, 43 libraries, and many others.

The County was facing five large obstacles in their energy management program. Maybe you can relate to some of them. 

The University of Kansas is a teaching and research institution that operates multiple campuses and serves as a center for learning, scholarship, and creative endeavor.

KU needed to track and manage chargebacks on 1,100 meters and submeters throughout a complex structure of divisions and departments including athletics, housing, and food services.

With annual chargeback revenue totaling over 2.3 million dollars, managing chargebacks was a high priority business process. In addition, KU wanted to measure the success of energy management projects.

How did KU do it? 

Today’s blog is a Tale of Three Cities.

We’ll give you three brief but instructive stories, and you see if you can match them to the city where each occurred:

The three cities are:

• Westminster, CO
• San Bernardino, CA
• Minneapolis, MN

Short on Cash

In 2012, this city declared a state of fiscal emergency and filed for bankruptcy protection. Reduced staffing made it necessary for an account technician to take on an energy management role. With two electric companies, two water companies, a gas company, and nine months of backlogged energy bills for its energy management software, this city needed a way to stop paying late fees.

You can know an organization by its numbers. Real estate developer Forest City Enterprises manages and owns properties nationwide. Their numbers are:

• 5,000 monthly utility bills
• 10,000 utility meters
• 3,000 chargebacks on tenant submeters
• 300 utility vendors
• 100 rate codes

With numbers this size, Forest City had an energy management challenge on their hands.

Watch this 2 minute video to discover how they solved it.

Is Corporate Social Responsibility just a trendy term or does it have tangible value for an organization?

Forest City Enterprises, Inc. has proven the latter. An owner, operator, and developer of distinctive places to live, work, and shop, Forest City emphasizes the benefits of CSR to its triple bottom line—people, planet, and profit.

When my brother John was 12 years old, he entered a wrestling meet at summer camp.

Pairings were determined by weight, and after the weigh-in, John was matched with … Joe. Joe was one of the camper leaders, was 18 years old, and was in the oldest cabin. It hardly seemed like a fair fight, and organizers told John he could opt out. But without a blink, John agreed.

The City of Westminster, Colorado was like many other modest-sized municipalities when it came to handling utility bill expenses.

In 2012, four California cities declared a fiscal emergency and/or filed for bankruptcy.

Want to hear a secret about your utility vendor? 

The City of Virginia Beach (CVB) has received the Louisville Award for Innovation in Government from the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) for improving the City’s utility bill management process.

Recently EnergyCAP received an email from Janet Purchase, the energy manager for Riverside County, CA.

Download the official press release.

The largest city in Florida has selected EnergyCAP energy management software for city-wide utility bill management. The City of Jacksonville, FL, awarded the contract to EnergyCAP, Inc. for a Utility Management System after a competitive selection process. The System will be funded by an Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant.

Jacksonville chose EnergyCAP to reduce energy cost, report on the environmental impact of government operations, improve the energy efficiency of City buildings, and reduce negative environmental impacts. EnergyCAP will be used for utility bill tracking, auditing, benchmarking, greenhouse gas tracking, and reporting for more than 6.5 million square feet including 300 buildings.

“We’re very proud to work with City of Jacksonville to attain their energy efficiency and sustainability goals,” said Steve Heinz, CEO of EnergyCAP, Inc. “Residents ought to cheer the City—not only for focusing on energy and cost reduction—but for acquiring the Utility Management System with grant funds.”

EnergyCAP will interface with IBM Maximo®, the City’s asset management system, and will receive electronic billing data from utilities including JEA, Beaches Energy, the Town of Baldwin, and cities including Atlantic Beach and Neptune Beach. EnergyCAP will also automatically submit building energy data to the ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager so Jacksonville can receive building energy ratings. EnergyCAP is a two-time ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year.

The City of Jacksonville joins other organizations in Florida already using EnergyCAP, such as the counties of Miami-Dade, Orange, and Charlotte, the City of Tampa, University of Central Florida, Valencia Community College, and 30 school districts and other clients.

Thanks to an enthusiastic and dedicated energy management team, EnergyCAP energy management software is up and running at Texas State University just in time to add value to a new submetering project.

Kalamazoo Valley Community College announced this month that savings from energy conservation efforts in the last three years has totaled more than $1 million.

The City of Westminster, Colorado was like many other modest-sized municipalities when it came to handling utility bill expenses. But Thomas Ochtera, Energy Coordinator for the City of Westminster, set out to challenge many of the assumptions that contribute to wasteful spending in order to impact city budgeting, accounting processes, and most importantly, energy awareness.

Read the PDF version.
Read the article in Campus Technology magazine.

The City of Tampa has selected EnergyCAP energy management software as its new utility data management system. Through EnergyCAP, the City will achieve its city-wide sustainability goals including reducing energy costs, improving energy efficiency of City buildings, reporting the environmental impact of government operations, and reducing negative impacts through energy tracking and utility bill management.

If you want something done right—do it yourself. That’s what Forest City Enterprises, Inc., a national real estate owner and developer, decided to do by moving all of its utility billing and auditing functions in-house.

Whether you are rooting for Kentucky or Kansas in the 2012 College Basketball National Championship, both schools are already winners when it comes to energy management.

Read the official press release.

EnergyCAP, the best-selling energy management software since 1980, has been selected by Florida’s Miami-Dade County for county-wide utility bill management. EnergyCAP will enable the County to reduce energy cost through improved electronic utility bill processing, auditing and payment, benchmarking, advanced analytics, and automated reporting.

EnergyCAP is mentioned in a thoughtful article on greening the data center through practices including centralization of server functions, server virtualization, and data center climate control.

Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government, in the heart of the Bluegrass Region of central Kentucky, has purchased EnergyCAP energy efficiency software with stimulus funds from a U.S. DOE Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG).

“Thanks to EnergyCAP, we have already identified savings of $250,000 in 2009 alone,” says Lou Schotsky, Vice President of Property Operations for Equity Residential (EQR).

Building reports are key to savings, according to the Energy & Waste Management Office (EWMO) of Toronto’s Facilities & Real Estate division. To generate savings, EMWO uses EnergyCAP to reduce energy use across the city.