Energy Data Access: Blueprint for Action Toolkit
Across the nation, building owners are measuring and tracking the energy performance of their buildings more than ever before. Known as energy benchmarking, this process helps building owners manage energy consumption and reduce wasted energy. Yet, many owners are prevented from benchmarking and making energy efficiency improvements because they cannot access simple energy information for tenant-occupied spaces within their buildings. Building owners can’t manage what they can’t measure.
Working with partners from cities, states, and real estate organizations, utility leaders are developing innovative solutions. Many utilities are now able to aggregate the total energy usage within a building and send that information electronically to building owners, providing a valuable customer service that empowers building owners to reduce wasted energy and supports the goals of ratepayer funded energy efficiency programs.
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TOOLSKey accomplishments and results of partners are outlined in this fact sheet, profiling the historic expansion of data accessibility and increases in building energy benchmarking.This document presents best practices for utilities to develop whole-building data access systems, based on the experiences of leading utilities from across the country.Utility Best Practices Case Study - ComEd Case StudyComEd was the first utility in the country to provide aggregate whole-building data to commercial building customers for the express purpose of enabling energy performance benchmarking.The City of Boston and Eversource worked collaboratively to develop a data access solution to clearly define the goal of providing whole-building data access to commercial building owners.This document provides guidance on designing productive stakeholder engagement and outreach to support the development of whole-building data access solutions.Salt Lake City, the investor-owned electric utility Rocky Mountain Power (RMP), and the investor-owned natural gas utility Questar worked with community stakeholders to design and implement a data access solution.PECO, an investor-owned electric and gas utility, and the City of Philadelphia worked with community stakeholders to design and implement a data access solution for multifamily and commercial buildings.This document provides guidance on how policymakers, utilities, and regulators should approach whole-building data access to maintain the confidentiality of utility customers.This document summarizes the findings of a Pacific Northwest National Laboratory analysis on how whole-building data aggregation thresholds statistically affect customer privacy.This document presents a vision for utilities to combine whole-building data access capabilities and benchmarking outputs to help increase the effectiveness of their energy efficiency programs.