Existing Technology to Achieve 10% Reduction by 2020

State and local government facilities suffer from two significant problems that will limit the effectiveness of a strategic Virginia Energy Plan. First, there are no distributed Energy Accounting Standards which has led to the inability to accurately and efficiently manage and reconcile utility expense. Without accurate reconciliation there is significant waste and cost overruns. The second problem is a lack of data and information to measure the success of any active strategy.

NEED

In order to document and measure success the Virginia Energy plan will need data. This data can be found within the utility billing and facility metering processes. The Commonwealth will need to select one or more technology providers that can assist in:

• Accessing metered and submetered data
• Unbinding and processing utility bills
• Delivering and deploying a comprehensive real time Energy Accounting System
• Detecting faults and alarming critical failures to leadership
• Tracking, reporting, and expense matching for all utilities and submetered utilities within a facility via an encrypted web interface
• Standardizing utility expense management and accounting.

SOLUTION

The path to this data, and the solution, is utility bills coupled with real-time metering. Bills are loaded with information but are historical (30 to 90 days removed).  For example, it is impossible to determine if the lights were left on Saturday and Sunday evening, if the main water line has failed and is leaking, or if the current bill is consistent with the actual utilities consumed. 

The internet of things connected with big data and a real-time Energy Accounting System creates a simple yet elegant solution to reducing the state’s energy spend. The state should select and implement an immediate, permanent, and low investment solution.

PROCESS

The technology exists today to gather all utility bill information quickly and efficiently, manage the data in a secure cloud and provide detailed action items to immediately identify buildings with excessive utility spend. Once these buildings are identified, leaders will need to have access to real-time consumption and drive permanent change at the facility manager level. All building and real-time spend would be presented to stakeholders via a simple red light/green light dashboard. This would allow for peer competition and establish a permanent method to manage key performance indicators.

Please review a sample graphic at http://ecc.energy/energysimplified/

TRANSPARENCY AND REPORTING

When fully implemented the state and local governments will have the ability to reduce cost, increase efficiency, and provide real-time validated diagnostics for reporting at all levels of state and local government via a simple online dashboard.

The goal is simple, energy accounting provides a systematized transparent solution to utility data overload, real-time metering and dashboards provide the solution to rally all stakeholders and provide permanent reduction in expense, carbon footprint and pollution. Ultimately the strategic Virginia Energy Plan will have a standard data, reconciliation, and reporting process to provide much needed savings and the metrics to determine the rate and magnitude of success.  

With reasonable support and participation, the state can achieve a 10% reduction in utilities cost by 2020.