Nebiat Solomon: Good afternoon.  My name is Nebiat.  I'm with the Weatherization and Intergovernmental Program here at DOE.  And welcome to our webinar on Energy Data Collection and Tracking For Internal Benchmarking and Energy management.  This webinar is going to be presented by Mona Khalil and by her colleague Jeff Hamman.  Welcome, and I'm going to take a couple of minutes to tell you a little more about the Technical Assistance Program, which is the host of this webinar.  Next slide. 

As you'll see, DOE has state and local technical assistance, which is managed through our office, the Weatherization and Intergovernmental Program's office, and as depicted in this upside down triangle, we have five priority areas:  strategic energy planning, program and policy design and implementation, financing strategies, data management and EM&V, and technology deployment. 

And within those priority areas, we produce resources for your use including general education like fact sheets and 101s; some implementation models, which are like case studies showing models that other state or local governments have used in their energy program deployment; some tools for research and decision-making as well as protocols, how-to guides, model documents that can be used by state and local governments interested in deploying certain kinds of efficiencies and local programs. 

We also encourage peer exchange and training.  We do that through webinars such as this one; also, conferences and in person trainings.  We have some project teams and other ways that people can get together and talk peer to peer as well as accelerators, and I think Mona will talk more about those later.  On a very limited basis, we have direct technical assistance, which used to be referred to as one on one for this level of effort will vary and will be done on a very limited basis based on replicability and high-impact efforts. 

Next.  So if you're interested in looking at what solutions we offer through TAP, please visit the Solution Center.  The website is listed on here and sign up for our TAP Alerts, which is the mailing list that we have to notify people of webinars and other occurrences.  Thank you for joining us.  I'm going to turn it over to Mona now. 

Mona Khalil: Hi.  Thank you very much, everyone.  It's great to have you on the phone.  I know it's getting to be holiday season and many of you are thinking of other places to be.  So we're very grateful that you're on the phone today.  So it's my pleasure to present to all of you not so much about what the work that DOE is doing, but about the smart and effective strategies and solutions that the state and local governments and school districts across the country have been implementing in the area of energy data tracking and to improve energy efficiency in their control of assets. 

Actually on the slide that flashed in front of you just before, if you could go back to that.  First, I wanted to thank all the folks that we've spoken to that made this study possible.  This work really would not have been possible without the collaboration of state, local governments and school districts that have partnered with us or that have worked with us in other times and in previous times.  Really, and their willingness to share time, data, all successes, as well as some challenges and barriers with us – that's been critical to us being able to put together this study.  So thank you.  And hopefully, we can expand this group of partners into the future. 

Okay, so if we can go back to the slide.  That slide is fine, too.  So just wanted to give you a little bit more background on what we do, who we are.  Building on what Nebiat mentioned, we are running a number of voluntary programs and some of them, you may have heard about.  The Better Buildings Challenge, we're now at more than 40 local governments and 8 states as partners as well as 11 school districts.  So this program continues to grow and lots of good things are coming out of that. 

We also have two Better Buildings Challenge Accelerators that are run through our office through the Weatherization And Intergovernmental Program.  One of them is the accelerator for performance contracting, and another one is focused on deployment of high performance outdoor lighting.  So I just wanted to bring those to your attention.  And then another thing that we do, which Nebiat already mentioned was the technical assistance and the resources that we create.  So this work is part of that. 

That effort, we found that by working with our various partners, we came to the realization that there's a dearth of resources on the collection and tracking of energy use data.  This is sort of a very simple concept that turns out to be quite a challenge for a lot of folks simply because there are a lot of data points to track and a lot of data in different places.  And so we wanted to put together a guide that would be very practical that could get you from A to Z pretty quickly and we look forward to launching that in early 2015. 

And so this guide is a totally new resource and they're focused on being step-by-step, looking at internal benchmarking and energy management to fulfill your energy management purposes.  And it features solutions that states, locals, and schools have shared with us that they've used to enhance their energy data management practices.  So it has a framework with five key elements for establishing a robust and sustainable energy data management process.  And I'll go over that today. 

We feature a number of evidence-based best practices that are very detailed as well as some shorter tactics that we found are good steps to help you in this process.  And then we provide checklists, tools, and templates, and those types of resources so that you can replicate and adapt the solutions in this guide. 

Okay, next slide, please.  So for today's presentation, I'll give you an overview of the topics that will be covered in the guide.  I'll first describe to you our study methodology.  We use the word "best practice."  So we want to tell you what that means in this context.  We also want to quickly cover the benefits that practitioners have demonstrated to us from their tracking energy efforts and then kind of go through the five key elements for effective energy data tracking.  So those are the major results of that study. 

I'll also cover a couple of brief examples of state and cities – two cities and one state – what they're doing in this area.  And so that the star of this show is Jeff Hamman with Portland Public Schools, who'll present his approach or his school district's approach to energy data collection.  Again, we are highly dependent on Jeff and other folks like him for their collaboration.  And we profile Jeff's work in the guide and he will describe to you today what he did and how it's working for PPS.  And then we'll leave you a couple of takeaways at the end. 

Okay, so moving on to the "Best Practices Methodology" that I just wanted to cover quickly.  So when we started this, we realized that you have all the answers, not DOE.  So primary research was the cornerstone for us.  We've performed in depth interviews with nearly 60 state and local governments, school districts, and other subject matter experts who are either tracking energy use or actively working to improve their energy data collection and benchmarking capacity.  And then from this primary research, we looked for evidence of success. 

We asked that entities provide us data to support that, and we would looked for all kinds of information to serve as evidence of the level of efficacy of the different solutions that we heard presented to us.  We evaluated the solutions against the set of criteria and that's sort of where the best practices come from because we believe that in order for something to be a best practice, this has to be effective, replicable, sustainable, and have impact.  And so all the solutions that we presented in the guide has been screened for the four criteria.  And we looked closely at the level of effectiveness so that we could be sure that the solutions we present have been validated. 

So we looked at whether solutions had at least five or more practitioners that had success with that solution and that the benefits that were generated outweighed the costs or the amount of effort that was required to put them in.  And once we got a better idea of the barriers and benefits that entities were encountering, we also developed a set of metrics by which we could sort of weigh them.  It's not a perfect science, but we tried to use energy and cost savings as a primary metric. 

And then we used some secondary metrics that we also thought were worth keeping track of and also that helped make the case and so resource savings, operational efficiencies, time savings – all those things were considered.  Cost savings from utility bill analysis, we're definitely considering as well as behavior changes and staff engagement.  We kept track of those. 

Okay, next slide, please.  So I'm sure I don't have to convince you that measuring your energy usage is worth it.  But just wanted to reiterate some of the things we heard over and over again from the folks that we've talked to that have pretty well-established energy tracking systems in place.  So as you'd expect, a lot of them have a plan that it helps to have a strategic energy management practice in place.  It helps to build the case to their leadership on the value of energy management and to gain additional support for additional projects or just to keep it going; so that's where this sustainability piece comes in. 

Many have found that they have improved control and transparency of energy costs and budgets.  That's what this has set out to do.  There have been improved operational efficiencies created through this.  So this is where multiple stakeholders or departments benefit, and folks tried to see – you're able to get more buy in from other parts of the organization.  And then in some cases, we've also come across practitioners being able to facilitate demand responses and energy purchasing decisions, all benefiting the organization.

Okay, on the next slide, I wanted to present to you the five elements.  And I have a bit of animation here, but basically, we found that the five green boxes you see here are key to successful energy management process.  So the first one, creating a comprehensive asset inventory.  This is the first step and probably the hardest.  It's the foundation for the tracking effort. 

The second one is streamlining data access.  This is critical for reducing the burden of data collection and improving your ability to react to what the data says.  The third is leveraging appropriate tools and analytics.  This is critical for integrating and making sense of all the data.  The fourth piece is optimizing the organizational structure.  This is how you execute this effort in the organization and there's different ways to do it; I'll cover that. 

And then finally, engagement in communication.  This generates the initial buy in, the state's engagement in goals, the program, very important piece.  If you could advance, if you could push the arrow, you'll have a few kind of takeaways about each five and those five will be available later.  So you can go back to them if you wish. 

Okay, on the next slide, I wanted to tell you some major takeaways about the "Comprehensive Asset Inventory."  So this is a list of all the buildings and other assets that use energy or water or other sources or other commodities that you want to track.  And as I mentioned, it could be undeniably the most time-consuming, perhaps, the most painful step in the larger process, but unfortunately, it has to be done.  So this is where you figure out what you are going to measure and all the information that needs to be associated with each asset.  So in the case of buildings, as a building, all the meters and building characteristics that are important in understanding the energy use of that building. 

So there are four main activities that are part of this process.  Because this can take six months or more to gather all the data, you will need for the inventory such as all the buildings that you want to track, perhaps, other assets, information about them from different departments that operate these, it turns out to be a quite complex task.  And so in the guide, we provide step-by-step guidance and tips to make this process as easy as possible for folks to navigate.  So we found that most organizations often start with a partial inventory first.  That makes a lot of sense. 

You might want to look at the biggest users.  And then those organizations continue to build inventory with time, kind of expanding what they track, sometimes making a bigger effort to actually capture everything; other times, kind of doing it in phases.  So this approach is fine.  We find that it works well.  The important thing is to get started. 

But there are a few data gathering organizational steps that are really critical to perform early on.  This is kind of a lesson learned from some of the organizations and it's to become familiar with all your data sources and what those data sources actually contain; the kind of information and the nomenclature that's used; the different ways that different agencies, organizations within your organization are listing things and naming things; and for you to actually standardize that and figure out one uniform structure that you can use to build on that. 

So you're going from figuring out all your data sources to then figuring out how they can all mesh together in one format because what you're trying to build is one inventory for all of these pieces.  So this is important so that as you add assets to the inventory and kind of expand it, it's a structure that can keep new information.  And it's flexible so that when new pieces are added to it, they can fit into the structure that you've created.  So once you have a list of assets to start with, you're basically ready to move on to the next step. 

I'm sorry; go back to the previous slide.  Yeah, we're on the purple now.  The purple box is about reconciling the data because you've gathered information from various departments, you'll find that it doesn't always match up.  And so in this step, it's a bit of detective work and it helps to be creative here.  So what we've done is provide you a number of tips that are real experiences from various practitioners in how they've reconciled utility bills, matched their metered data to their buildings and other assets they're tracking.  This is also what takes a bit of time. 

And then finally, the last box which is the box in orange, it's critical to keep inventory current, we all know that the portfolio of assets is not a static thing.  Utilities introduce changes by swapping out meter numbers.  All kinds of things happen, and so it's easy for the inventory to be outdated so you need to guard against that or put in processes in place.  And in the guide, we also cover how to do that. 

Okay, so now moving on to "Streamlining Data Access."  So this is a major piece because as you grow your number of assets that you're trying to track, it becomes harder to manage.  It becomes harder to enter that data manually if that's how you've started.  And so here, what I just want to do first is define what we mean by streamlining data access.  So we're talking in the context of collecting data from our own organization.  So in this case, there's really no data privacy concerns. 

We're talking about buildings that you have the utility bills for.  We're not covering so much rented space.  So what we mean here is that the transfer of data is automatic, electronic, and that it's comprehensive utility bill data that you're getting your hands on, and that it's for all accounts in your portfolio.  So we're really looking at a comprehensive data tracking process where we're looking at monthly or more frequently energy use intervals and we're trying to minimize manual data entry as possible.  So in this graph on the left, it's about how can you, as quickly as possible, get data from a number of utilities into your database inside your organization? 

And again, just to highlight some of the benefits by streamlining data access, you are able to get the data faster and so less time goes between any kind of usage anomaly and the time that you can uncover it, the time that it takes for you to realize that some waste is happening somewhere.  And so that leads to savings, both energy and cost savings, obviously.  Ideally, what you're looking for is all information on the bill so that you can use all of the variables to maximize your savings.  So here, it's important to make sure that you continue to get information about rate schedules, demand charges and things like that. 

Also, with data access solutions that are streamlined or automated, you improve data quality by removing errors that are introduced through manual data entry.  So it doesn't mean, though, that you don't need to do some QA/QC.  It remains a very important step in this process.  So that's always a piece that we want to make sure that people understand.  There's still quality assurance and quantity control that needs to take place even with electronic data transfer. 

And then finally, we hear from folks that there are benefits like operational efficiency.  Basically, what you're doing is removing redundancy in operations.  You don't have some folks in different departments punching in the same data in two different databases anymore because all the data is much easier to transfer from one group to another through either a common database or through a common format. 

Okay, on the next slide, please.  So here, we have five solutions that we've heard folks use.  They vary in complexity.  They vary on which are available based on what utility you're working with.  But because some local governments have so many utilities often because especially states because of the distribution of their assets, we find that folks usually need to use one or more approaches to get data faster.  And it depends, of course, on their size and number of utilities that they have. 

So the first one and probably the most simple or straightforward one is consolidated billing.  This is where the utility aggregates the customer's account and corresponding utility bill data into a single spreadsheet file and then it delivers the file to the customer electronically on a monthly basis.  We found that this is the most common approach for entities that have municipal utilities that offer no other data access options.  And municipalities have successfully developed custom solutions for consolidated billing with their utilities.  So this is a great option if you're kind of still in the process of entering data manually and your utilities don't have anything else readily available for you. 

The second option is an electronic data interchange.  This is an electronic billing solution that some investor owned utilities have are close to 70 IOUs across the country offer to their customers.  And it involves machinery to bill format and a data exchange from the utility to the customer.  One advantage of EDI over consolidated billing is that all data contained in the bill is captured and transmitted.  And it's done so on a daily basis, so basically, as soon as an invoice is generated by the utility. 

So that has its benefits because in a consolidated bill, you're waiting for all those bills to be put into one file.  Here, you're getting daily feeds basically from the utility.  So this is a good option for entities that have around more than 100 accounts with one utility that offers EDI which is because it takes a little bit of effort to implement EDI.  And it's generally limited to electric IOUs and some natural gas IOUs also offer it. 

And another piece that's important to know here is that you'll mostly likely need a third party to procure the software that can translate the file from the utility to you and that then you need to kind of partner with them in order to manage this form of data transfer over time.  But it's worked very well for a number of cities and it's something to look into for sure.  ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, I'm sure you've heard of that, the data exchange web services option.  This is an application program interface that allows utilities to export costs, consumption and billing period data directly to Portfolio Manager. 

It's a great shortcut if you use Portfolio Manager to have your data go directly into Portfolio Manager.  But currently, it's available through some utilities only, and the ones I have right now is Arizona, California, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Washington have some utilities that offer it.  And I know that we're working very hard with EPA to continue to grow a number of utilities that are adopting that solution.  And then the fourth and newest data access solution is Green Button.  Specifically, the one I'm listing here is the Green Button Connect My Data functionality. 

This is a feature that is especially useful for entities that have many accounts because it allows those organizations to use a third party to help them collect data and analyze it.  So Green Button uses a standard XML format to share data.  It's an advance from EDI because of that standardization that EDI does not have.  And what distinguishes it further from other solutions is that it actually supports interval data transfer as well as monthly data and so it depends on the type of meter, type of utility that you're working with, but really we believe it's going to revolutionize the way that data is transferred from the utility to a customer. 

So right now, the status of that is that DOE and the White House and other organizations, NEST, who developed this standard format is working very hard with utilities across the country to adopt this standard.  Many utilities have committed to implementing Green Button.  The first rollout of that was for residential customers, but the commercial side, which impacts state and local governments and schools as well, has been a little bit slower.  And so now we're very much focused on working with utilities to implement the Green Button Connect My Data for commercial customers so that they can manage larger portfolios and more accounts through this Connect My Data functionality. 

So right now, I'm aware of Pepco, which is a D.C. utility; San Diego Gas and Electric in California, offering Connect My Data; as well as Pacific Gas and Electric rolling it out very soon.  And so those are some places we're looking for their experience and we're looking for local governments that are able to get data from them.  And we know that, for example, that D.C. is doing that already and also, some school districts in Hawaii as well. 

Finally, the third party service is an approach that involves a service provider that aggregates utility data on behalf of their clients.  It's not so much a technology solution or a technical approach, but more of a how you leverage support from a third party to help you do that.  Companies can use a variety of data formats and they've also developed proprietary technology to translate data from utility bills to an electronic format.  And this is one area and actually, Jeff will talk about his experience with that. 

We found that this is a very good option for medium to large entities that have a lot of vendors and data formats to deal with.  It was, perhaps, the least common approach that we found being used, but it's effective, takes little work to get it going, but then really pays big dividends down the road.  So each solution varies in the manner in which it improves on the approach of using manual entry some people do.  

And on the next slide, I just wanted to show you kind of the summary of what our conclusions are around data access solutions and how they support various organizational goals.  And so as you may grow or as your ambitions grow over time from simple benchmarking to more strategic energy management and also trying to leverage the tools you're putting in for greater operational efficiencies, we found that this strategic energy management and more efficiency in the organization really are better supported with EDI Green Button or third party services. 

Okay, on the next slide, I wanted to move to the third element, which is "Tools and Analytics."  This is a key piece because an appropriate data management tool is going to help the energy manager, sustainability officer really make sense of the data and put it into action.  And so looking at all this information is complicated enough on its own that using a tool that can simplify this really is advantageous.  So the tool can help you in three major ways.  First, it can serve as the single main database to house inventory and where the date is entered. 

And so it's important that it has a good structure for organizing data and be flexible so you can change it over time and that it be interoperable with other data systems.  We found that a lot of organizations do end up with multiple data systems in order to be able to track their data and still keep their other systems in place.  It's also critical that the tool offer analytics that can help you interpret the data.  So you need good flexibility there.  You want to be able to create customs analyses as your experience and demands or needs for that grow. 

It's helpful that the tools automate certain functions for you so that you spend less time manipulating data and more time identifying the actions that you want to take to find energy reduction actions.  Finally, it's important to think about how different users can interact with the tool.  It's a good idea to have a platform that's able to be open to more users than just the energy officer, the sustainability folks so that folks can engage through it, and so that you can start to institutionalize this kind of practice across your organization. 

And I wanted to put in a plug for our sister program:  The DOE and EPA, who are working very hard both on the public side and private sector side to develop tools that fulfill the needs of organizations for data tracking.  If you have time, please check out the SEED Platform and, of course, ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, who those are growing their functionalities and adding features so that you can do better what you're trying to do with your data. 

Okay, next slide is the "Organizational Structure" piece.  Here, we found a variety of approaches.  A number of organizations use a decentralized approach to data collection.  This is where the utility bills go to the various departments, their accounts payable folks.  And then data entry can help in, either within the department.  And then some kind of rollup of that information is sent over to the Sustainability Office versus a fully centralized approach, which is where all utility bill data goes directly, or it could be in parallel, but goes straight to the office that's trying to track all that information. 

Data entry or receipt happens there and then that information is then made available to the various departments or the various users of the energy use.  And we've found that we see a trend basically of folks moving from a decentralized to a more centralized approach. 

On the next slide, I just wanted to give you an example of something that I call a "partially centralized approach" because here – I'll try to walk through the slide a little bit – but this is an example of a large organization that has involved a third party to take a copy of their bills.  The utility sends copies of the bills to the third party, but also to the accounts payable and various other agencies.  And so there's kind of a parallel flow of information from the utility. 

But the advantage is for the Department of General Services, who's in charge here, of tracking data is that they get the information directly through the third party.  They've developed an energy database, which is where all this information goes.  And now a lot of people have access to that energy database, so both the energy manager/engineer.  All the folks that can use that information at the Department of General Services level can access that information as well as the agencies.  The various energy coordinators as well as account payable folks can interact with the database to do what they need to do. 

And on the next slide is the last piece, which is "Engagement and Communications."  Some of the key takeaways here is that it's really something that cannot be forgotten about.  Without ineffective engagement and communication, we think that the data effort will not flourish to the extent that it can.  So it's very important to be able to sell sort of the value and the benefits of the energy tracking effort.  It's easy sort of to bury yourself in the data, but it's really an opportunity more to show the value and the results that you're able to create. 

And also, it's important to realize that there are a number of stakeholders that are unique and that you have to figure out what type of information speaks to them.  This is somewhat of a subjective art.  It's hard to know from the beginning.  You're dealing with individuals, you know, what kind of data speaks to them or what kind of information presented in what way.  So what we found is that folks really have taken the time for some trial and error and for some improvements of the way that they report out or communicate their information to either up the chain or down the chain.  So the guide will also have some ideas on that. 

And then in the next three slides are just the few examples of folks.  This is the city of Knoxville, who's implemented consolidated billing as part of their strategy for tracking their energy reduction goals.  So as you know, it's very hard for a small office – I think this office was one or two people – to be able to enter data manually.  And so the city realized that they really needed to find a better way to do that and their goal was to look comprehensively at all of their energy assets, so not just their buildings, but also street lights and other assets, basically everything that was generating a utility bill, including non metered assets were also part of this. 

And so what the city did is to reach out to their municipal utility and asked them for a consolidated bill.  What turned out is that they needed to iterate on several versions of this consolidated bill because the energy program manager there wanted more information about the bill, and so it took a little effort.  And in the guide, we described everything that kind of goes into the consolidated bill that the city of Knoxville developed with their municipal utility.  And it's worked very well for them. 

So at this point, they have more than 1,000 utility accounts that are in this bill.  They're able to track their progress because of that.  They're able to verify the savings on some of their projects because there's access to this information, and they're able to do it with their limited resources because it takes only about eight to ten hours per month for the project manager to actually manipulate the data and move it from the consolidated bill to the way that they track it. 

On the next slide, we have the "City of Virginia Beach" in Virginia.  What they've done is to implement an electronic data interchange and to integrate all of their energy bill data, both in a tracking system or in a payment system.  And so basically, the data that they're able to receive from their major utility – one is Dominion, and another is natural gas through EDI – goes through the energy manager and gets reviewed and approved for payment through the energy manager before payments are made.  And so through this, they're able to eliminate nearly 1,000 paper bills per month.  They still have some other bills that are paper, but this is a huge difference for them, a huge time savings for all their account payable folks who spend 158 hours here per month on average down to 24 hours in order to get the bill into their system and make the payments that are needed. 

And so the energy manager has really been able to track energy usage for the city, perform energy savings verification on some of their completed retrofits, come up with new strategies for finding savings in the city by being able to analyze the data.  And it's really helped propel Virginia Beach to having more ENERGY STAR certified buildings.  And also through this effort, Virginia Beach received the Government Finance Officers Association's Award, and so we feature them in the guide as well. 

And then on the final slide that I have before Jeff starts to tell us more about his work, I just wanted to present the state of Maryland.  The state of Maryland has, if you can imagine, a very large portfolio of assets.  In 2008 they decided to lead by example and track all of those assets.  What they had to deal with is 124 vendors, more than 16,000 utility active accounts, and a very decentralized way of paying their bills.  So even though there's 58 agencies, there are 120 accounts payable departments.  And so when they realized that they wanted to track all that information, they knew that they couldn't do this by going the decentralized way. 

And so what they decided is to create a centralized energy data collection and tracking system.  They engaged a third party to assist them in first compiling all of the assets and the inventory, so building that inventory, developing of streamlined utility data access solutions with as many utilities as they could.  At this point they have something like automated access with more than 16 large utilities.  And then the third party is also helping them maintain a transparent web based portal where all this information is available publicly.  And so they're able to track their use from month to month or year to year, depending on how they want to present this. 

And they're able to leverage this information across other parts of their organization, including the block and index purchasing that they do with energy, which has saved them nearly $17 million in 2013.  So they're happy with that.  And now I want to pass the mic to Jeff.  Jeff is the Energy Specialist and the Buildings Operations and Energy Program at Portland Public Schools.  43.56

Jeff Hamman: Hello.  Thanks, Mona.  I appreciate being on today.  I just wanted to chat with everybody about what we've done here at Portland Public Schools.  Like Mona mentioned, my name is Jeff Hamman.  I'm the Buildings Operations and Energy Program Manager here at Portland Public Schools in Portland, Oregon. 

Go ahead and advance to the next slide.  So just a little bit about who we are.  Like I mentioned, we're in Portland, Oregon.  We are the largest public school district north of San Francisco here on the West Coast in the Pacific Northwest area.  We have a little bit over 9 million square feet building space that we manage; that's about 100 for facilities.  We're a fairly old district. 

So most of our schools and our facilities are about 65 years or older.  So we're dealing with very old building stock.  And we have about 800 plus utility accounts and more meters than that because several of the accounts have multiple meters; about 47,000 students; 6,000 staff.  And last year or this year, our utility budget is a little bit over $10 million. 

And next slide, please.  So just a little bit on us and what our general goals around energy management and then our goals for this project.  We participate in the Better Buildings Challenge, and part of that is what we committed to is 20 percent reduction in energy use by 2020.  We needed a couple of things from this program specifically as we needed quicker access to our data for analysis and also for reporting on several different things that we are doing within the district.  We want to the reallocate our staff time to more productive means. 

When we really first started looking into this is when a time when budgets were really tight and we were trying to be more efficient with the staff that we had here.  So that was one reason we looked to this solution.  We also wanted to simplify the process of invoice payment and processing, which is very cumbersome here at the district.  So I'll get into it a little bit.  And then we also, as part of a program that we have here in our state, we have to report to our Office of Energy annually our energy consumption.  So this makes that easier to comply with our requirement to receive the funds that we get through the state to do some of our energy efficiency work. 

Next slide, please.  So I'll chat a little bit about the barriers that we had when we first went to our new bill processing tool.  What we used to have is what you see here below in the left was a utility management database that we managed manually.  It was very cumbersome.  I had to enter in every single utility bill into this database manually.  As you can see there on the screen, that's just one example of all the data fields that were applicable for a specific invoice.  So every line item was entered in there from user's cost, date, all the different types of line items there. 

And so each invoice was manually entered into this database.  You can imagine 800 invoices a month.  That took a lot of time and we generally got backlogged very quickly.  We also, in trying to go to a new process, we had to look at how cost-effective could this be for the district.  So we needed something that wasn't going to be very expensive, but also was going to help us be more efficient.  A couple of the barriers was around procurement, project management, and implementation. 

So how do you go about procuring a software resource moving forward?  That's a little tricky sometimes.  It's something that we worked with our IT department on procuring this asset.  Also, we needed to dedicate project management time, and we needed some specific project management skills around software integration.  So again, I work in facilities, but we worked with our IT project management team to help us implement this solution in the front end, which was useful and then also implementation. 

That was one of our biggest hurdles to get over because implementation of a program like this is a long process because you're usually pulling in historical data, and you have to make sure that all your building assets are correct around their location, attributes, and their size; and you have to match up all the utilities.  It's a very long implementation process.  I would tell anybody that is probably a four  to six month implementation process.  And during that time, my biggest concern was that I have lost my visibility to my data, which is really one of the biggest things I use in my day to day work here is the database. 

And so I was pretty scared there to lose that visibility to the data, which I did lose.  And so there was about four, six months there where I didn't have data that I could really look at readily.  And then also, there was the how do you bring account payable into the process?  So here at the district, we have had kind of a disjointed process.  So we had to work with our team and talk about how we're going to bring them into the process. 

As you can see here on the right hand side, there's a little bit of how long it took us to process these bills.  So it was about 12 to 14 weeks once it went through account payable, once I entered the manual data entry into the database so that way I could actually report on what was entered into the database, and so it was a very cumbersome process at that time. 

So next slide, please.  So what we did when we looked at moving forward to a new solution, we kind of looked at our main folks here and our positions at the district that actually touched the database that we currently had.  And this is a conservative estimate, but we said, "Okay, this is about how much we spent average monthly to manage our utility bills and processing."  And we assumed that we could pretty much no longer have this dedicated time and so we gave this a value of which you see here in our total annual savings for the district. 

And so what that did was give us a baseline to look at how much is the solution going to cost us, and what additional benefits do we get from that solution, and how can we redirect our staff time to other matters?  So this little analysis gave us kind of the metric.  Okay, so let's find a solution.  If this meets this, then we can move forward and that's what we did.  We found that we could get a solution that was less costly than what we were spending in personal time and gave us much better benefit.  It was quicker access to data.  It gave us more reliable data.  It gave us good alerts.  It gave us a completely new platform to work off of it.  So that will kind of move us into the next slide here, which is our solution. 

So our new solution was – we stayed with the same company that we were working with before, but we moved to their new web based platform.  This gave us a lot of different things that we didn't have before.  A lot of these are mentioned as far as utility bill management.  We have improved reporting capabilities including custom reports that we can work on.  I have the ability to track my budget closer and quicker and then analysis and modeling.  It helps me look at utility rate structures and analyze those annually to see where I want to make changes or where there may be anomalies out there.  I have automatic ENERGY STAR upload now. 

So everything that comes into the database is now automatically uploaded to ENERGY STAR, so we no longer have to do that.  And like I said, it's a web based platform, which is really great.  Our previous platform, you had to have a separate software application on each computer if you wanted to access the database.  So if I ever had to push data out to one of our sites, I had to actually send them spreadsheets or something that I created.  Now I can just create them a log-in.  I can send that log-in to anybody and they can pull in, they can look at this, they can take the database and run the numbers and do whatever they want with it. 

It also gave us a way to have a dashboard that gave us specific things to look at, and that can be somewhat customized as well.  So that's a really great tool.  They had some training and technical assistance that comes along with it.  And then also, as far as the energy management tool, I have the utility bill data continually getting updated; so twice weekly, that comes to us.  So basically, the database is updated twice weekly.  The invoice processing is much quicker and the auditing functionality that they take care of for us is very great. 

So they'll look at not only the billing and make sure that the billing was correct, but that the rates were right, that there wasn't a massive swing, but also look at usage and have some usage thresholds that will then send a notice to us.  All of that before was basically done manually.  I would basically compare the usage from the previous month in that manual database that I saw and then I would try to compare those two and try to identify anomalies.  And then we had some reports that we could run, but they were highly cumbersome for the number of sites that we had to really identify usage anomalies. 

So we ended up looking at it more on a monthly or an annual basis per site, and that left us with some room to improve.  We also do things like late arrival notifications.  We get all of our bills, and our correspondence is now digitally scanned and is accessible through the database.  Any type of random correspondence is e mailed to us so we know what has come from utilities.  And, like I said, the invoices are archived now.  So all of that is much better for the district moving forward. 

So the next slide, please.  So here's a screenshot of what our database, our new tool looks like, and this is just for one school.  It's an example of a dashboard of that school.  But what this does is it gives us a quick snapshot of one site.  Up at the top there, we can look at different types of utilities, such as natural gas, water, electricity.  And we can compare those right off the bat for a year to year basis and see where they're trending.  Then below that, it has each account listed for that site and you can show more details or hide as much as you want for that specific site.  It has each site and all their accounts, which is right there at your fingertips.  Now I can move back and forth through sites very easily. 

On the side there, it has information on all the building attributes, which are editable by me, which is very nice if I need to update square footage or anything along that route.  And then it also shows the Google Map, which will take you directly to where this site is located now.  There is an actual dashboard that you log into.  So that gives you some usage notification and comparison, but they're more useful for some of the higher director-level people here in the district.  I want to make sure I'm not missing anything there.  We also can schedule reports through this and share reports through this platform now. 

So on the main dashboard page – which this is not; this is a site dashboard page – there's actually a Share Reports and a Schedule Reports tabs.  So I can schedule reports and get them delivered to somebody monthly if I like; weekly if I like.  I can also, if I wanted to develop a report on my own, I can now share that report to anybody.  I can e mail them, send that to them and say, "Here's your shared report."  All you have to do is click on it.  It brings up all the attributes that I picked, such as the timeframe, the buildings, the specific attributes that I'm trying to understand, looking at kilowatt hours or I'm looking at demand or something like that.  I can send that out to people.  I didn't have that ability before. 

And also, like I mentioned, now everybody has access to this, so my account payable department can get in here.  Directors can get in here.  Some of my operations folks, if they need to, can get in here and look at this data.  And also the big benefit, so schools can get in here.  So a lot of the kids like to do energy projects.  They like to look at energy efficiency and set goals for their schools.  So they can all get in here now and do some of that and look around and see what their schools are doing, which is really helpful for the district. 

Next slide, please.  So just to go into a little bit about some of the outcomes from the district implementing this strategy, like I mentioned, the manual data entry of utility bills is pretty much eliminated.  We have some paper bills that we do still process, but all of our bills are pulled into the database now.  Some of them we do process still in house, but they are sent back to our third party providers, who then uploads that data into the database.  So all that data is acceptable to us.  Like I said, our staff time is reallocated to look at other things:  usage anomalies, improve energy performance, work on other projects. 

It's made our invoice processing time much quicker, which is highlighted here and the slide before.  It used to take me, once I got everything in there, about 12 weeks to sometimes longer, depending on we're supposed to have access to that data.  Now I have data, on average, about six weeks.  So you're always going to have that four week lag normally on a monthly billing cycle, but now I have that data five to six weeks after it's actually happened to be able to look at it.  And those automatic usage notifications are huge and have been one of the most beneficial things for us moving forward with this project, which I'll talk about in the next slide. 

But also, the process flow efficiencies are much better as far as going from our third party provider through me and then through our accounts payable department, where I used to have to go through and whenever there was a usage anomaly or a billing error, I actually had to correct that retroactively.  I had to go to the utility.  Eight to ten weeks after the fact, ask for a credit, ask for a bill adjustment.  Now actually, that happens before it even goes to account payable.  So all that is corrected before it even goes to our account payable department.  So that's another thing that is also very helpful when having our third party provider process our bill data for us. 

You can move to the next slide, please.  So here's where I was just talking about some of the usage notifications and then also I manually look at the data that gets sent.  But this is just one example of several examples, but this is an example.  One of our larger high schools is here, where I got a notification in November that our October water usage that escalated fairly drastically.  And what that did was allow me to go directly to our facilities department, work with them to find a solution, go out and investigate the site, and find a couple of different where we had a couple of different – water leaked out of the building.  That was corrected and you can see in December we were back down to a normal usage level. 

Now my scale on the right hand side is actually off.  So the $10,000 figure there is actually correct, so I need to readjust my scale.  So in one month, we spent about $9,500 more in water at that site because of this leak.  Because of the ability to get that usage notification the next month, I avoid that ongoing cost for who knows how long.  A lot of times that could persist for six to eight months if it wasn't a water leak that was noticeable in the building.  We also had another site where it's a similar situation, got a usage notification.  The increase had gone up by $7,000 in a month. 

I actually went out there myself that day and located a water main that had broke underneath the building.  That problem was fixed immediately and we were able to address it.  It did one thing.  It helped us save on utility bills, but no one in this building had known that there was a water leak problem, and the water leak was under the school.  It wasn't out in the field or somewhere else.  So it gave us the ability to get in there and address that problem.  So it didn't lead to a bigger issue as far as anything in the facility.  So it has more benefits than just the utility stage.  It also helps operations. 

Highlight a couple of other outcomes here in the next slide.  So here's a little bit of what I do, looking at our buildings to help kind of find usage anomalies.  This report isn't actually produced through the database, but I used the data that I pull from to produce these reports annually.  And as you can see, I highlighted a couple of things.  There in the yellow arrow was one of the schools that we used the database last year to identify an issue at Franklin and then address that issue and get that building back down to where it should be. 

A couple on the left-hand side are three buildings that I've identified issues with this year and we're trying to address those issues.  Two of those buildings, we are actually addressing.  And it's funny actually, just this week, I started working on putting some of this data together, and the first school there, we've actually figured out the issue with that building, and we will correct that here next week.  So this gives us a lot of useful data to work with.  And one of the downfalls of this is when I'm looking at this, I'm looking at an EUI, which is an energy metric of kBtu per square foot over a year. 

A lot of our buildings were converted from fuel oil to natural gas, and so some of our usage notifications weren't set up right at those buildings because they were set up for gallons used of fuel oil or therms used in natural gas, when really, I should normalize that for BTU use because when we made the switch, I missed a couple of these buildings that had issues because the usage anomalies weren't set for BTU use.  I wasn't able to see the BTU change until I actually ran the annual report. 

So that's something I'll actually work on here in the future is making sure that our BTU use for the building on a monthly basis are set and registered.  So we'll get a notification of our BTU usages, you know, 10 to 15 percent above where it has been normally for the previous month.  And we use the data for a lot of different things around retrocommissioning.  And we also have an ESPC SEED project, so we use this for measurement and verification tools as well.  So it's very helpful.  So this is one outcome. 

And I'll just show you a little bit here on the next slide what we do with this data as well for reporting and whatnot.  So I'm able to pull this data and I'm able to show the district and our directors and our facilities folks the direct impact that the outside environment has on our energy use.  And a lot of times as an energy manager, that's a hard thing to show people.  They just want to know how much money we're spending on our utility budget, and we don't take any impact of the escalating cost of fuel and the major impact that the outside air temperature has on your energy consumption. 

So by having this data at my fingertips, I can show the direct correlation, which you can see here through the graph that our energy use in the building have on – or excuse me, that the heating degree days or the outside air temperature has on the energy use in the building.  And it also helps me show what month did I have maybe a spike in energy use, where maybe my outside air temperature, my heating degree days have decreased.  So this is another tool that I can use to kind of troubleshoot the system and the buildings as a whole.  This is for the whole district, but you can run this similar analysis for a site.  So just another tool here, another thing that we use this data for here at the district. 

And then one more here on the next slide that we put together is a cost avoided module, which we use to show how much money our energy projects and our program here saves.  On the left, you have what we've chosen as our baseline here.  The red line basically takes the baseline year usage and then multiplies that times the average cost of energy for each year.  So I take the baseline energy consumption from fiscal year '09-'10 and then I multiply how much it cost me in '10 '11, '11 '12, '12 '13, '13 '14.  That gives me my projected cost for my fiscal '09–'10 baseline.  And then we actually put in the actual cost. 

And the green section there is how much we actually avoided in costs.  So you can see from fiscal year '10, we've actually saved about $4.3 million in avoided costs through the district, through the work that we've done and through our operation.  And all of that, I would not be able to show that unless I had this data at my fingertips and so that helps us move the program forward and continue to do projects and also make sure the projects that we have done are performing how we like them.  I believe that's all I have right now.  So I'll let Mona finish up here.  Thank you. 

Mona Khalil: Jeff, thank you so much.  I hope other folks appreciated the detail that you went into and I encourage everyone to follow up with questions if you have them to Jeff or myself.  We're real data geeks over here.  So we'd love to talk more about that.  Just a couple of takeaways from my presentation.  Really, and Jeff, I think, emphasized that the data tracking strategy is time consuming.  It's hard to put it in place, but it's a foundation for strategic energy management and pays made, types of dividends, not just energy reductions, but energy cost reductions, but other benefits to the organization. 

And I think it's on us to show those benefits to others.  It takes times.  And collaboration with different utilities is critical, especially if you have to approach your utility on creating custom solutions.  It's good for them to know that you want this kind of information and it can be a rocky path for some.  And we're trying to help with that with the Green Button initiative and with petroleum manager.  So let us know if you'd like help with that.  It also seems to be no one solution for everyone, or a combination of approaches might be helpful, and the third party is certainly a solution that can serve you a variety of your needs. 

It's important for the tool as you saw Jeff seemed very pleased with what the tools could do for him and so look into that, look at what the options are.  Look at the different ways that this effort is structured within the organization.  We've seen folks change this stuff in their organization.  It might be hard in the beginning, but it's one aspect that might make it much easier for you to collect data and to get the kind of data that you need. 

And then finally, it's important to remain flexible.  As you see, we're trying to push out Green Button and other solutions, but we also don't want to discourage folks from taking the steps that they need in order to get started.  It's important there to just get started and remain flexible in the systems that you put in place so that you can adopt more efficacious solutions as they become available and as you develop your capacity to do that as well.  Okay, so that's all that I'm going to say. 

I see that you have sent us some questions.  Thank you very much for that.  There's time.  We have time till 3:30.  If you'd like to participate in a discussion, we'd love that.  Some of the questions that I see came in.  I'm just looking now.  One question was around actually a question for Jeff:  "How are you able to – "  Can you see it? 

Jeff Hamman: Yeah, I can see it.  Excuse me here.  So I had it there.  Can you read it to me? 

Mona Khalil: Yes.  "So how were you able to explain the annual energy use and other changes to your school district leadership prior to the tool upgrade?  Was such data able to be transmitted?" 

Jeff Hamman: Yeah.  So before we had this tool, like I mentioned, we did have a database here in the district that we used.  So I used that tool to produce reports to our leadership to show the work that we were doing and the results we had.  The problem with that was that leadership constantly wanted to know how we were doing right now and I was always saying, "Well, here's the data from four months ago."  So this now gives us the way to produce that data much more quickly and also be much more reliable.  So there were times where, of course, you would miss things, and there's issues with the manual data entry.  So now we feel more confident the data that's in there.  So the results that we're putting out there, we feel so much more confident. 

Mona, there's one other question on here that talks about "how we integrate the building automation software with our energy management tool here."  And currently, we actually don't have those two systems integrated at all.  But what we do is I work with that system as well and I know a lot of energy managers don't necessarily do that.  But I use our building automation software as a tool, when I find these anomalies, to go out and figure out maybe what the problem is. 

Like the one school that I mentioned that we had the water problem, that's exactly what we did was get into our building automation software and see what was going on in there and then went out to the site and troubleshoot it.  So we used both of those tools.  I've seen those really good applications where the building automation software and these tools are put together and that's a great tool.  We just haven't gotten there yet. 

Mona Khalil: Thank you, Jeff.  That's a great question.  Another question that came in was about the SEED Platform and "how much of this data is built into the SEED Platform or is available open source?"  So the data we're presenting today is going to be published in the guide, which will come out in early 2015.  And the way that we thought of this work is that the data collection and tracking is almost a precursor to and can feed into the SEED Platform.  So the SEED Platform is a tool that will accept all kinds of data that you want to put in it. 

And so our focus is on how to gather all that information.  SEED is one platform that you can use.  And once you have it there, it's interoperable with other tools, other apps that folks want to develop or that will be developing.  I know it's still in flux, but that's what I know about SEED.  And I can connect you with our expert here on SEED, who will probably have a better answer for you; this is Elena Alschuler that works in the building's technology office. 

And another question that came in was, "What is the threshold site for local government where it's worth investing in this?"  Jeff, feel free to comment on this.  From what I heard from all the governments we've spoken to, it depends a bit on the type of solution.  For example, consolidated billing typically is just a time investment.  It doesn't really require a lot of – there are no costs involved.  EDI is a bit more expensive, but that's why we put the threshold there.  If you have about a hundred accounts with a utility that offers EDI for example, you break even pretty quickly.  It's more of a setup, you know, the time and effort it takes to set this up.  But in terms of the cost, they're not astronomical, but they're scaled to the size of the organization.  And so, Jeff, maybe you want to address it from the third party experience and the slides that you have. 

Jeff Hamman: Yeah, for us, it's not a very large expense in our overall $10 million utility budget.  It's a tiny drop in the bucket for the savings that we get especially, like I said, in a couple of water examples there, it pays for itself very easily.  The cost can vary greatly, though, like I mentioned, on the implementation of the software.  If you don't have any data now, you don't have anything, a database, that's where it may cost you a little bit more because usually, they like to have two to three years of historical data to really make this a useful tool.  So that can be a little bit expensive in the provider gathering all that data and then bringing it into a current database. 

We already had an existing database that we were able to port over.  So that kind of made that process a little faster, but it's not astronomical.  I think it would be what does it cost you?  And what's your utility spent annually?  And how much savings do you think you can see there?  Another thing that I didn't mention here a lot, or I didn't really talk about a lot is late fee avoidance.  If you currently have a lot of late fees that you get charged by a utility provider, this solution really drastically reduces your late fees.  And in some instances, the provider will even guarantee that you won't have any late fees.  So it's another thing to take into account as far as making this project go. 

Mona Khalil: I certainly heard that from other organizations as well, but that's a great way to keep late fees, as well as finding errors and finding accounts that are no longer active, for example, and not paying the fees on those.  Okay, we still have a couple more questions.  One, Jeff, is for you:  "Has PPS developed any renewable energy systems into their facilities, such as wind geothermal, photovoltaic, hydro, biomass?  If so, how do the energy savings that are not based on grid supplied energy find their way into the information management software?" 

Jeff Hamman: Yeah, so we do have some renewable energy systems here.  In some of those sites that have the smaller based PV systems, really it's just the deduction and the total energy use.  The only way you can actually see what was grid supplied versus on site supply is to go into the invoice detail at those sites.  And since the invoices that we capture all the details from each invoice, we can pull up a specific line item and report on that specifically, so how much PV was produced because all the utilities track that when they're billing you.  So we can report on that specific feature to go, These sites produce this much PV energy."  So that's how we usually deal with that at the sites that have PV and we do have one site that has a really small wind system as well. 

Mona Khalil: Great.  Thank you.  Another question that came in was, "Are there any examples of a state agency in the U.S. acting as a repository of detailed utility data and making that data available for use by communities and local governments?"  So I've been thinking about this question a little bit.  One state that I'm aware of is Massachusetts.  Maybe it's a little bit different than the way that the question was asked, but Massachusetts has developed a platform called Mass Energy Insight, where utilities deposit their data for communities, local governments that have signed up and for state agencies as well. 

The granular data, there are privacy issues there.  And so that state can aggregate some of that information, but I know that the state has been able to use that data to look for opportunities for programs.  One example was with water treatment plants.  And so because there's one platform across the whole state that it's collecting a lot of information from utilities, the state has really a lot of data at their fingertips that they can then use to strategically think where there are opportunities.  But in terms of making individual community data available, I'm not sure that they can do that.  I think it has to be aggregated.

"Any software recommendations?  I have 70 small government facilities."  That's one question that came in.  So as DOE, I can't really –

Jeff Hamman: You can e mail me.  I can send you the ones that I've looked at.  We could probably have a broader conversation offline.  So if anybody wanted to e mail me in the contacts, I would be glad to chat about – we looked at about four or five different programs when we were looking at implementing this and I know some more that had come in since then.  So you could shoot me an e mail.  It's probably better to do it then. 

Mona Khalil: Okay.  Another question is about home energy tracking:  "Is there service for home energy tracking?"  So unfortunately, I'm either not understanding your question or I'm not aware, but I can forward you to our home folks here at DOE that specialize in that.  If you could clarify your question, that would be helpful.  Okay, if you have any more questions, please keep them coming.  You can also contact us after the webinar.  We certainly appreciate all these questions and hope this webinar was helpful.

Monica Arevalo: Thank you so much, Mona and Jeff, for speaking.  I think we'll actually conclude our webinar.  Unless you want to answer that last one that just came in – clarifying about the home energy tracking, third party service versus the industrial service from Jeff.  I don't know if you guys can clarify that. 

Mona Khalil: No sorry.  I'm still not sure.

Monica Arevalo: I'll just send him your e mail but following the webinar.  Thank you, everybody, for attending.  And thank you, Mona and Jeff, for speaking.  The slides and recording will be available online at the webinar's archive page on the Weatherization and Intergovernmental Program's office website.  Thank you and if you guys have any last words, then we'll conclude the webinar. 

Mona Khalil: I just wanted to thank Jeff again for his time again and again.  And it's been a great collaboration.  And for anyone who's interested in finding peers to live chat for others that they want opportunities to connect, please reach out to me.  And that's what we do here is provide you technical assistance and connect you with folks that can share information with you.  So just reach out and we'll get back to you.  Thank you, all, for your attention. 

Monica Arevalo: Thank you.  That concludes our webinar.

Jeff Hamman: Thank you.

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