Benchmarking fundamentals, rationale, EnergyCAP Group Manager, Auto-Groups and User-Defined Groups, ranking options, chart configuration. Learn more at www.EnergyCAP.com.
I told a story here about a client that reported a $500k/yr savings due to rate change issues identified in ECAP meter group charts. I’ll give you more details.
We usually define the entities as “buildings”. If you want to compare with anonymous buildings across the country, you can submit your building for an ENERGY STAR rating through Energy CAP (recommended). But ENERGY STAR has a limited number of building use categories. Comparing similar buildings within your organization is often more useful, as you have (or can obtain) information on operational characteristics, vacancy levels, and other factors that significantly impact energy consumption.
Gives you a starting point (baseline) – kind of like typing a destination address into google maps, you see where you want to be but have no idea how far you will have to travel until you enter your starting address. Identify outliers, investigate their operations to determine why and then adopt as best practices (or identify and remediate worst practices)Reasonable goals – you might want to reduce your energy consumption by 20%, but if your building is performing in the top 10% when compared with its peers, it will be more difficult and costly (you likely have already hit the low hanging fruit improvements)Budget for energy efficiency projects is hard to come by, you want to make sure that it is spent wisely – ideally, the savings from today’s projects will become the funding for the next projects
Found in the Groups & Benchmarking tab Annualized bill data is usedAccess can be restricted by user
Found in the Groups & Benchmarking tab Annualized bill data is usedAccess can be restricted by user
Found in the Groups & Benchmarking tab Annualized bill data is usedAccess can be restricted by user
Found in the Groups & Benchmarking tab Annualized bill data is usedAccess can be restricted by user
Found in the Groups & Benchmarking tab Annualized bill data is usedAccess can be restricted by user
Found in the Groups & Benchmarking tab Annualized bill data is usedAccess can be restricted by user
System defined: Blue FoldersCustomizable: You can add additional categories of Primary Use, and a new group will be automatically created for youPrimary use can be defined when you enter the building, added or edited at any time. Use whatever categories make sense for your organizationDoes not have to match the ENERGY STAR primary use types, these are specified on the ENERGY STAR screen
This building is part of a customized use group called “Public Library”. Note that there is a Groups category that shows what groups this building is in with a hyperlink for easy navigation (click the link to go right to the auto group), also the category (Place Primary Use Auto-group). To change the Primary Use assignment, use the edit pencil. The edit screen will allow you to choose from a dropdown that list all the use groups in your database, or use the Plus sign to add a custom category (that’s how Public Library got in there). That’s the only way to add a place to an auto-group.So when you group this way, all buildings with a primary use type of Public Library will be ranked. Results (next slide)
This building is part of a customized use group called “Public Library”. Note that there is a Groups category that shows what groups this building is in with a hyperlink for easy navigation (click the link to go right to the auto group), also the category (Place Primary Use Auto-group). To change the Primary Use assignment, use the edit pencil. The edit screen will allow you to choose from a dropdown that list all the use groups in your database, or use the Plus sign to add a custom category (that’s how Public Library got in there). That’s the only way to add a place to an auto-group.So when you group this way, all buildings with a primary use type of Public Library will be ranked. Results (next slide)
Blue foldersAnnualized bill data is usedAccess can be restricted by user
Yellow foldersAs many as you want – be creative!City of Denver – made quite a few Commissioning: to compare 5 buildings that they had identified to receive Participating in the Better Buildings Challenge to reduce their energy usage by 20% by the year 2020Breaking buildings into groups to better manage their efforts and track their progressAnother concept is to have an energy reduction competition. Fire stations really seem to respond to this. So the idea is to set a goal for energy reduction, give them some tools and ideas, come up with prizes and have the fire stations compete against each other. Have regular events to keep it fun and motivated, give them all access to EnergyCAP so they can track their progress. Grouping all the fire stations together is an easy way to compare the common use buildings. User Defined Place groups are more commonly used than user defined meter groups – most users find the auto groups for meters gives them all the options they need.
Use the gear to access the ranking options – can customize for each auto-group THESE OPTIONS are customized by user – so I could set them to the way I prefer to see the group presented, and it wouldn’t affect any other user in the databaseRanking date range (not really Billing Period), or Start date, end dateOrder (lowest to highest is the default) – you will usually want to change this to “Highest to Lowest” so your “Highest use buidlings” will be at the top. An exception is if you are using rankings for an “energy competition” where you want the top performers at the top of the ranking. Commodity filter: Either ALL or pick one Limit rows: how many buildings do you want to show? (I like to start with a view where you can see all the buildings in the group, then narrow it down to the top 10. (25, 50 or 100)Show Excluded (even if a building is added to the group, you might not want to include it in the ranking. EX: Building was a library, but is currently vacant and not being used – or under construction). Default is no (don’t show excluded buildings)Sort DD Sensitivity By: Do you want the ranking to be driven by the weather-dependent usage or not (both will be shown, determines which is blue and drives ranking, and which is orange)Exclude Zero Weather Load Meters (Yes/No) Yes default?
Place and meter rankings work pretty much the same way, I’m going to show Place rankingsRanking of buildings in the Place Group by cost per floor area (blue bars, they determine the order ranking)Orange bar is the total cost for the date range.Uses ANNUALIZED data, date range set in ranking options in last slide (this particular ranking chart is for natural gas only)The Vertical line shows the average FOR THE ENTIRE GROUP, which may include buildings not on this chart (you can choose to exclude buildings, or the number of buildings may exceed the Row Limit for the chart)Groups and benchmarking is linked to user permissions. You can choose to hide group members that are outside of a user’s Top most place permissions, so if a user doesn’t have access to those buildings, they will not be included in their rankings. This is useful if you are helping individual departments focus on the energy consumption of their assets only (default is to allow users to see all buildings, set to hide under Place Group Properties edit pencil).
Place and meter rankings work pretty much the same way, I’m going to show Place rankingsRanking of buildings in the Place Group by cost per floor area (blue bars, they determine the order ranking)Orange bar is the total cost for the date range.Uses ANNUALIZED data, date range set in ranking options in last slide (this particular ranking chart is for natural gas only)The Vertical line shows the average FOR THE ENTIRE GROUP, which may include buildings not on this chart (you can choose to exclude buildings, or the number of buildings may exceed the Row Limit for the chart)Groups and benchmarking is linked to user permissions. You can choose to hide group members that are outside of a user’s Top most place permissions, so if a user doesn’t have access to those buildings, they will not be included in their rankings. This is useful if you are helping individual departments focus on the energy consumption of their assets only (default is to allow users to see all buildings, set to hide under Place Group Properties edit pencil).
For the Use/Area rank, I changed the ranking options to include All commodities, converts to MMBTU for comparison. Central Library (#5) has typical use/area, large total cost due to large sqft building (540,315 sqft)
Electric only (assumed, you don’t have to change ranking options to elect only):Broadway library 3000 sqftVirginia Village library 11,562 sqft definitely look at DSM for this one, and probably the top 10 in this chart.(central library 2.18 due to large sq footage, #23)
This is useful by commodity or overall. Use with the cost/area rankings to determine where to target energy efficiency efforts.
(Show how to exclude a building, hover over name and select the red circle with slash through it)
(Show how to exclude a building, hover over name and select the red circle with slash through it – Central library excluded)how would you use this one to determine which buildings you should consider investigating for the biggest savings (average use in MMBTU per day blue bars, Total cost orange bars) Energy savings or Cost savingsLarger use per day, but also large total cost. I would probably take a look at top 3 – large average daily use + large total use Which should you address first: #4 or #6 and why? Same square footage, similar total cost (#6 higher, but #4 is higher cost/day) #4 11,443 sqft, #6 11,866 sqft#8 would be a low priority
We’ve seen a few of these rankings now – so I switched this one up a bit (showing best to worst). This is natural gas only! The HDD (Heating Degree Day) and CDD (Cooling Degree Day) Sensitivity charts help you understand how the usage of similar buildings (buildings in the same Place Group) is related to the weather. Together the charts give a picture of how sensitive your buildings are to the winter and summer weather and help you spot abnormal buildings. Not available at the meter level.The blue bars show the weather load in units of Usage per Degree Day per Area (square foot or square meter). In technical terms this is the slope of the usage vs. degree day regression line normalized for floor area to allow comparison of similar buildings. When comparing the values for two buildings, the building with the lower value requires less energy to meet the load imposed by each degree of outside temperature. Usage is shown in Global units (typically MBTU, GJ, eKWH) so that buildings can be compared regardless of the commodity used to heat and cool them.The orange bars show the non-weather load in units of Usage per Area per Day. This is the Base Load, the usage due to lighting, plug loads (equipment that is plugged in), domestic hot water, kitchen and process loads, etc. When comparing the values for two buildings, the building with the lower value requires less energy to meet all non-HVAC loads, and may have better nighttime shutdowns and setbacks. Usage is shown in Global units (typically MBTU, GJ, eKWH) so that buildings can be compared regardless of the commodities used within. (Note: In cases of very inefficient HVAC systems, HVAC loads may be shown as non-weather loads because statistically the HVAC usage is not correlated with the weather.) High weather load (high in relationship to similar buildings) can mean that a building is poorly insulated or has excessive ventilation rates. High non-weather load can mean that a building has very high internal loads, is over heated or over cooled, has large summer terminal reheat loads, has very inefficient HVAC equipment, or leaves lighting and other equipment on 24/7.The Weather and Non-Weather loads are calculated each year using a use vs. degree day linear regression technique. Results for each meter are shown in Buildings & Meters -> Calendarized Data ->Use vs. Weather. The Help topics for Calendarization & Normalization explain the use vs. weather process in more detail. The Benchmarking charts do not use the analysis results for a user-specified year. Rather, the charts use the most recent year that has a valid correlation for either summer or winter, i.e. a green checkmark on the Use vs. Weather page. By doing this, the number of weather-sensitive meters is maximized and the overall objective of the Benchmarking chart is achieved. When a meter has no year that is weather sensitive, the most recent year is used for the Non-Weather loads.
Electric only!What would you likely see if we changed the commodity for this graph to be natural gas? (No blue bars, only orange. no meters are weather dependent, don’t typically use gas for cooling unless you have an absorption chiller so all you have is baseload)
Also makes sense to at least mention the AN reports that show building rankings.The meter groups in Miami-Dade (on staging) show very well (by rate code). I’ve used them for training many times. But MDC isn’t very good for place groups, unless you set more up.