8 ways to reduce your energy cost
8 WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR ENERGY COST HIGH-ROI ENERGY-PROCUREMENT IDEAS FOR LARGE ORGANIZATIONS By David Vranicar, Verisae
8 WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR ENERGY COST
ABSTRACT For many large organizations that operate multiple facilities, the simplest, fastest and least expensive way to reduce the cost of energy is to refine your energy-procurement practices. Yet four key challenges may have prevented your organization from achieving the benefits you otherwise could: You may not be aware of all the opportunities. The topic can be complex, especially if you work with multiple utilities. You need accurate, detailed data. In many organizations, such data are not readily accessible in useful, actionable form. Maybe you haven’t yet dedicated the right resources to the task. Or you haven’t got the right processes or systems in place to a do a proper job. The ideas you will read here are generally fast, straightforward, nondisruptive and relatively low in cost to implement. You will get the most out of this report if you fit the following description: You are responsible for reducing the cost of energy in your organization. Your organization consumes more than 10,000,000 kWh of energy in a year. Your organization operates in more than a dozen buildings and possibly on multiple sites.
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8 WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR ENERGY COST
3 WAYS TO THINK ABOUT YOUR ENERGY COSTS Your energy-related costs fall into one of three categories: 1. The amount you pay your energy suppliers. 2. Your portfolio of energy sources, including utilities, on-site renewable energy, and purchased Renewable Energy Credits (or RECs). 3. The cost of maintaining the efficiency of equipment that consumes energy.
THE ENERGY SUPPLY SIDE VS. THE DEMAND SIDE This and subsequent reports in the series address four substantially different but interrelated ways to reduce total energy cost: • Pay less for the energy you buy. • Rebalance your energy sources. • Use less energy. • Find a more optimal balance between energy prices you pay and the energy you use. A separate report addresses ways to reduce the cost of maintaining the efficiency of equipment that consumes energy. We refer to the first two ways to reduce energy cost as supply-side methods. The third method is demand-side. The fourth is a hybrid of the first and third. This report focuses on ways to pay less for the energy you buy. You will also find here a brief discussion of the data, systems, processes, and resources you’re likely to need to implement the ideas suggested here.
8 WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR SUPPLY-SIDE ENERGY COSTS To reduce the cost of energy you buy, consider making some or all of the following changes to your energy-procurement practices: 1. Consolidate all your utility billing data in a single place where all parties in your organization can use it easily. 2. Pay the lowest-cost tariffs you can. 3. In deregulated markets, choose the lowest-cost provider for your usage patterns. 4. Avoid overpaying your utility. Find billing errors. 5. Take advantage of rebates, tax breaks and incentives. 6. Don’t let utilities sit on your deposit money.
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8 WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR ENERGY COST
7. When you open or close a facility, make sure your utility adjusts you to the most
THE BEAUTY OF MANAGING ENERGY WITH SPREADSHEETS Spreadsheets offer many advantages that are hard to beat:
favorable rate as soon as possible. 8. Take advantage of other special programs your utilities may offer. Congratulations if you’re already doing some or all of these things. Our experience with more than 40 companies suggests that you’re in the minority. You look to
• They are inexpensive, extremely flexible and almost universally available. • They are highly standardized. • The code for Microsoft Excel is mature, bug free, and exceptionally well documented. • Most people in large organizations already know how to use spreadsheets.
further reduce your energy costs on the demand side, as subsequent Verisae reports suggest. Even if you’re already doing many things well, please skim through some of the detailed discussions that follow. They may offer some nuances that can help you save additional money.
1. Consolidate utility billing data in a single place where all parties in your organization can use it easily.
High-quality, inexpensive training is widely available for those who don’t. • Customized worksheets are easy to build, even for people with no program-
Excel spreadsheets are the leading software application used to manage energy data in organizations of all sizes. There are plenty of solid reasons for their broad appeal (sidebar, p. 3).
ming skills. Consultants who can build
But they also have their limitations (sidebar, p. 4). To avoid these shortcomings,
spreadsheets are widely available at
you must invest a good bit of, well, energy. You must invest enough forethought
reasonable cost.
and coordination to use spreadsheets effectively. You may also have to come
• The reporting capabilities of spread-
to agreement across business functions with diverse needs. You may have to
sheets are vivid and highly flexible.
consider differences across legal or regulatory jurisdictions, state or national
• With a little help from your IT group,
borders, cultures and languages.
you can easily transfer data among
To help you navigate these complications, it may be wise to engage your IT
spreadsheets and other common busi-
organization or outside consultants. Even with such help, you can still get it
ness software applications.
wrong unless you work with someone who has previously built systems to manage energy. It takes about three times to start getting it right.
If you feel ready to move beyond these limitations, you have several alternatives that can take you far beyond what you can achieve with spreadsheets.
BEYOND SPREADSHEETS: DIGITAL SCANNING AND IMAGING OF BILLS One useful next step is to scan and digitize your utility bills so their details are easily accessible online. This enables you to capture all the data that can help you reduce your bills. It can also make such data available for convenient use by multiple functions within your organization—including, for example, your energy-procurement, energy-conservation, facilities, and Accounts Payable groups. Be aware that making digital images of all your utility bills available online is not the same as making all your energy-related data searchable or reportable for everyone who needs it. For more information: Call us 612 455 2300 or [email protected]
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8 WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR ENERGY COST
THE CHALLENGES OF MANAGING ENERGY WITH SPREADSHEETS
CREATING AN ONLINE DATABASE To make your utility billing data available for thorough reporting and analysis, you must capture it through keyboard entry or optical character recognition (or OCR).
For all their strengths, spreadsheets also have serious shortcomings. These are especially apparent for large organizations.
Your biggest challenges will be to come to consensus on the needs of all the groups who will use the data, to overcome any internal resource limitations you may face, and to eliminate data-entry errors.
If you’re trying to collect large amounts of data from many different sources and consolidate it into a single view, for example, spreadsheets can have these limitations: • They are hard to standardize and control across a big organization. • You are likely to have version-control
IF YOU’D RATHER NOT DO IT YOURSELF One alternative is to outsource the capture, presentation and reporting of data from your utility bills. In doing so you can choose from a wide variety of utility bill-processing service providers. Many can set up a software application that captures all your data and makes it eas-
issues with your data, your formulas
ily (but securely) available to everyone in your organization who needs it. Everyone
and your reports. It’s hard to keep
can get all the data they are authorized to see. They can prepare their own reports
track of what you’re looking at and
and analysis.
where it originated.
You can capture all the data that appears on your utility bills, and you can see it in a
• Spreadsheets are rarely tested and debugged as thoroughly as other software applications. • They are not good at handling very
presentation that’s consistent across all utilities, regardless of their billing formats. You can enter the data yourself or you can have the service provider do it for you. A very few service providers (including Verisae) will guarantee 100% data accuracy. You can pay your bills yourself or you can have your service provider do it for you.
large data volumes. • It’s easy to introduce errors and hard to
In some cases you need only a web browser. You don’t have to buy computer hard-
find them. One or two wrong keystrokes
ware, and you need not involve you IT organization in setting up databases or data-
can ruin the accuracy of several weeks’
transfer interfaces.
work. It can be hard to detect errors. • You have no audit trail. The numbers spreadsheets generate are hard to verify. • It can be hard to protect your data security.
2. In deregulated markets, choose the lowest-cost provider for your energy usage patterns. [Note: If all your operations are in regulated jurisdictions (sidebar, p. 6), this recommendation won’t save you money. Skip to suggestions 3 through 9.]
• You’re at risk of losing key data if you don’t follow rigorous backup procedures.
Seventeen U.S. states or districts currently enable retail buyers of electricity to reduce their cost by choosing their supplier from among two or more competing utilities. (By contrast, you have no choice of provider if you operate only in regulated states.)
Similar deregulation has also occurred for natural gas, but the opportunities for savings are generally smaller than for electricity.
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8 WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR ENERGY COST
The best utility for your needs is not always obvious. It may be that no single utility is the best choice for all your facilities, even within a tight geographic area. To evaluate the real cost for each utility you’re evaluating, you will need detailed information about all available tariff schedules from each utility. The rate structures of competing utilities may be hard to compare side by side because utilities often structure their rates in different ways. The total tariff always includes several components. In some deregulated markets, only some of these components may be deregulated. The others remain regulated. Any items directly related to the charge per kWh are most likely deregulated. Other fees are typically add-on charges for transmission, billing fees, etc. In comparing rates for two or more utilities, focus on the deregulated components. It is also important to understand what add-on fees deregulated suppliers may include in their rates. For example, some assess penalty fees for “line loss” (often called bandwidth fees). The bandwidth fee applies when a customer materially changes the amount of energy it uses. Suppliers charge such fees to protect themselves against possible losses. Utilities normally buy energy by hedging through forward contracts. If a customer unexpectedly increases its usage, the supplier may have to acquire additional energy to cover the increased demand. It may pay a higher price than the cost of the forward contract. On the other hand, if a customer uses less power than expected, the utility must sell its excess back into the market, possibly at a loss compared to what it would have charged the customer for the same power. To make apples-to-apples comparisons of rates, find the base-rate tariff for each utility. In addition to looking at base rates, also consider any rebates, incentives or credits that each utility may offer you to invest in improving your energy efficiency. (See more on this in Suggestion 3 below.) If your operation has flexibility to limit your energy load during periods of peak demand, consider which utilities offer the best incentives to do so. To decide which utility or combination of utilities presents the most economical alternative overall, you will need solid historical usage data for all your operations. The more granular and detailed your usage data, the more confident you can be in making your decisions. And the more money you are likely to save. Depending on the kind of supply contract you may execute with deregulated utilities, it may also be wise to dedicate a person to watch the market for ongoing opportunities to buy additional energy “layers” or “blocks” when favorable market conditions arise.
3. Pay the lowest-cost tariffs you can. Assuming you know which utility companies you will buy from, the next step is to be sure you select the lowest-cost tariff rates for which you qualify. For more information: Call us 612 455 2300 or [email protected]
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8 WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR ENERGY COST
This suggestion is usually not as easy or as obvious as it may appear. Utilities generally
WHAT DATA TO CAPTURE FROM YOUR UTILITY BILLS
provide multiple rate structures and leave it to you to decide which works best for you. Rate structures are complicated. Tariffs are not as straightforward as rates posted
In many organizations the Accounts Pay-
in simple pricing tables. They are algorithm for calculating the prices you will pay
able department is responsible for captur-
under certain conditions of usage.
ing data from utility bills. Tariffs often consist of multiple components, starting with a general-service tariff. GenUnderstandably, they often capture only the
eral-service tariffs vary by the size of the customer. Utilities usually define a customer’s
data they need for their own purposes, such
size by the value of its annual peak load.
as the amount paid and the date of payment. For effective energy management, you
Consider Time-Sensitive Rates
would be much better off capturing the fol-
In addition, a growing number of utilities offer prices that vary with the time of day.
lowing data at minimum:
Three such price structures are time-of-use rates (or TOU), critical peak pricing (or
• Name of utility
CPP) and real-time pricing (or RTP).
• Type of energy purchased
Under TOU rate structures, the amount you pay for electricity varies by the time of
• Monthly energy usage and appropriate
day, broken into daily peak and off-peak blocks. It is the most prevalent form of time-
units of measure (kWh or therms)
based rates, and many utilities now require their larger commercial and industrial
• Billing term dates
customers to be on them.
• Base tariff rate paid
If you can shed load during peak times (for example, at midday) you can save money
• Rebates or credits applied
compared to paying a flat, fixed rate.
• Taxes or other surcharges paid
Critical peak pricing is a relatively new variant of time-of-use. The key difference is
Electrical utilities may include as many as
that the utility adds a fee for usage during a critical peak period and levies a signifi-
275 different data elements on their bill-
cantly higher price for only a few days or hours a year.
ing statements. Natural-gas utilities may
Real-time pricing exposes customers to hourly price fluctuations, typically based
include as many as 250.
on real-time or day-ahead wholesale prices. According to a report by the Lawrence
As a rule, the more of this data you capture,
Berkeley National Laboratory, more than 70 utilities in the United States have of-
the better you’ll be able to manage your costs.
fered voluntary RTP tariffs permanently or in pilot programs. One challenge of RTP
For a more complete discussion of this topic, please visit http://www.verisae.com/ page/1/utility-bill-processing.jsp.
is that pricing can be volatile, so you have to be able to adjust your demand level quickly in response to rising prices. If you’re a big user of energy and can shift your load from one time of day to another, consider signing up for a time-sensitive rate.
Despite the complexity of tariffs, they can present big opportunities for cost reduction if you know how to interpret them and have detailed usage data to determine your best rate structure for each.
Check the Best Rate for Each Facility If you operate multiple facilities—even if only one or a few utilities serve them all—you may benefit from getting the most economical tariff rate for each facility. For more information: Call us 612 455 2300 or [email protected]
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8 WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR ENERGY COST
Your evaluation gets much more complex if your organization operates dozens, hun-
ENERGY DEREGULATION BY
dreds or thousands of locations in many states or even across national borders. The
JURISDICTION
number and variety of tariff schedules is much greater, and your volume of historical
Energy deregulation has occurred in these 17 U.S. jurisdictions: • Arizona
• New Hampshire
• Connecticut
• New Jersey
• Delaware
• New York
usage data must be quite large.
If You Operate a Large Number of Facilities It can be a challenge to collect and compare tariff information from dozens of utilities even within a single country. Unfortunately, no single database provides easy access to tariffs for all utilities across the United States. The Lawrence Berkeley
• District of Columbia • Ohio • Illinois
• Oregon
• Maine
• Pennsylvania
• Maryland
• Rhode Island
• Massachusetts
• Texas
• Michigan
• Virginia
National Laboratory has taken the first steps toward offering such a database through the Tariff Analysis Project (or TAP). The TAP database presents tariff data in a consistent manner across utilities, but it is incomplete. The good news is that the bigger and more complex your operation, the bigger your opportunity for savings.
If you operate in one or more of these
How to Get Your Utility-Rate Analysis Done
deregulated areas, you can probably benefit
You have three options for getting this utility rate analysis done:
from competition among energy providers who want your business.
1. You can do it yourself, using internal resources and spreadsheets or whatever systems you use now.
2. You can hire a service provider to do it for you each time you need it. 3. You can work with third-party software that enables you to do it whenever you like. With such systems in place, you can repeat the process any time you think your energy usage patterns or utility tariffs have changed enough for you to reevaluate your options. If you spend more than about $2 million a year on energy, you may find it economical to hire full-time or parttime analysts to check the potential savings for each rate scenario. If your internal systems are inadequate, if you face headcount constraints or if you think your opportunity for savings is relatively small, your best option may be to use third-party software that helps you make your decisions. It will probably cost less than you think.
4. Avoid overpaying. Find and eliminate billing errors. Do you have effective ways to identify and manage utility billing errors? If not, you can probably reduce your total energy spending by 1% to 3% by putting such measures in place. Utility billing errors are typically of one of two types: • The utility charges you a higher rate than you should be paying. • The utility makes a mistake reading your meter and charges you for more energy than you used.
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8 WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR ENERGY COST
In Verisae’s experience, the first error is much more common. But the more utilities
IF YOU DECIDE TO LOOK OUTSIDE FOR HELP
you work with, the more opportunity you will have to uncover errors of both kinds. Some organizations use their own resources or third-party services to conduct periodic
Your cost to implement a utility bill-process-
audits of their utility bills. Verisae has worked with one company that discovered a $3
ing system usually includes a small fee for
million billing error through such an audit.
initial setup and then a low fee for per invoice to scan the invoice, enter and verify the data, and make the data available on the Web.
Periodic audits can certainly help. But internal auditing groups may not be able to perform audits as often as would be best for catching most errors. Any audit is timeconsuming and resource-intensive if you don’t have easy access to utility data. And
The fee you pay per invoice can be lower
audits can be expensive if you use outside services to conduct them.
than the price of a cup of gourmet coffee. It’s probably also lower than your internal cost.
Use Systems to Monitor Your Utility Bills
Providers of utility-bill processing services
As an alternative to performing audits, you can also set up systems and or services
can implement within two to three months.
that will catch such errors as they occur. This approach has these advantages:
During that time you work with your utilities to redirect their bills to the service provider’s
• It monitors for errors constantly rather than periodically. • You can catch errors earlier so you have better cash flow and can put your money
post-office box. The service provider can either pay the utility bills on your behalf or can set up a web-
to better use. • You can avoid negative effects on quarterly financial statements.
services arrangement with your Accounts
• It may cost less than periodic auditing.
Payable department. You can retain control
You may find it most cost effective to work with a third-party vendor that can pro-
over the bill-payment process if you like.
vide utility-bill processing services for you (sidebar, p. 7).
With an effective system in place your
5. Take full advantage of rebates, tax breaks and other incentives.
provider can set up rules to: • hold payment for bills that are more than 25% higher than the previous month’s bill
Is your organization overlooking ways to get help in paying for your energy-conservation initiatives? In many cases you can get some or even all the cash you need without applying for
• hold payment for bills that do not match your master list of facilities • contact the utility if the bill does not arrive when expected.
loans. You may need to look no further than your energy utility, which might reimburse part or all of your costs. Many electrical and gas utilities offer their customers rebates to encourage investment in energy-conservation measures. The payments cover equipment such as
Such rules can identify anomalies to help
heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems, lighting, motors, occupancy sen-
you avoid billing errors and late fees.
sors, cooking equipment and more.
Lots of Money Available How common are such rebates? They are common enough to make it worthwhile for you to do some research. U.S. electric and gas utilities collectively offered more than $3 billion dollars to corporations in 2008.
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8 WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR ENERGY COST
Utilities offer these programs because their state regulators require them to do
CHALLENGES IN MANAGING REBATES
so. Ultimately, it is more economical and better for the environment for utilities to motivate you to reduce your energy demand rather than building more production or
Big organizations face special challenges in
distribution capacity.
participating in rebate programs:
To compensate for the utilities’ investment in helping you reduce your demand,
• Lack of standardization. More than
state regulatory agencies pay the utilities a guaranteed rate of return. This return
2,000 utility companies operate in the
is in addition to the money utilities can recover beyond the cost of these programs.
United States. The more of these utili-
It means you ultimately pay for such rebates and incentive programs through your
ties you work with, the more time and
monthly bill, whether you take advantage of them or not.
resources you must invest to understand your options. You must contact
You Pay for Rebates Even If You Don’t Use Them
the rebate department in each utility,
If you don’t take advantage of these programs, it’s almost like paying multiple
research what equipment qualifies for
times—first through your bill, next through your failure to get some of that money
rebates, and obtain the forms you need.
back, and third through your failure to save money by reducing your energy use.
• Varied requirements. Some utilities require you to submit plans in advance. Some mandate facility inspections both before and after a project. In some cases you must submit an application before you install equipment. In others you can submit it within six months af-
Worse yet, you also pay for the benefits your competitors can get by taking fuller advantage than you do. In addition to mandating rebates and incentives, most state governments invest heavily in making money available for Energy Efficiency Resource Standards (or EERS). EERS provides a market-based way for states to encourage more efficient generation, transmission, and use of electricity and natural gas.
ter. It can be hard to meet such diverse
EERS establish targets for utilities to save energy, They also establish ways for utili-
program requirements.
ties to help their customers achieve and document energy savings. Laws or regula-
• Timing. Rebate programs operate on different cycles. One utility may run its program from June through July, while
tions that create EERS or EERS-like programs are either in place or are in place in Texas, Hawaii, Nevada, Connecticut, California, Vermont, Colorado and Pennsylvania. They are soon to be implemented in Illinois and New Jersey.
others from January through December.
If you haven’t already taken a close look at EERS in the states where you operate, it
Programs often change from year to
may pay well for you to do so now. But be forewarned: EERS involves a fair amount
year, so each new year can bring new
of complexity. You’ll need a strategy for how to manage your participate without con-
incentive amounts and changes to the
suming too much internal resource.
kinds of equipment that qualify.
Consider Possible Tax Incentives Finally, most states allow tax exemptions for utility costs to organizations engaged in “production and manufacturing.” If you can show that your facilities do either, the related portion of your utility bill should be tax exempt. In many states you can recover the exemption up to seven years after the fact. A good audit of such opportunities can provide an immediate payback that may be quite large.
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8 WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR ENERGY COST
If you have adequate staff resources and the desire to explore your options on your
IF YOU DON’T MANAGE REBATES FOR YOURSELF
own, start your research by visiting the websites of your utilities and your state energy offices.
Multiple service providers enable you to out-
If you choose to hire a service provider (sidebar), it’s important to find one that un-
source some or all of the effort of managing
derstands utility rebate programs and also understands the mechanical and electri-
utility rebates. They research the kinds of
cal specifications of energy-consuming equipment. Such knowledge and experience
equipment that qualifies for rebates from
can help you in two ways. It can guide you toward alternate equipment that may help
each utility. They also know the utilities’ pro-
reduce your energy consumption in the future. And it can help you secure larger
cesses for obtaining rebate payments.
rebates from your utilities.
Outsourcing of rebate processing has multiple benefits. Experienced service providers
6. Don’t let utilities sit on your deposit money.
can offer turnkey services that leverage
When you open a new facility or establish a new energy account, most utilities will
their relationships and their years of experi-
require you to pay a deposit to ensure they will get their money even if you miss pay-
ence working with utility program managers.
ments. These deposits can be in the tens of thousands of dollars. Some utilities will
Service providers often offer incentive-based
accept a surety bond or letter of credit in place of a cash deposit.
payment structures whereby you pay them only a percentage of the monies you receive from your utilities.
Rules vary by utility, but most utilities require you keep your deposit on file until you’ve established that you consistently pay your bills on time. They may keep your deposit for a year or longer.
Such providers can also offer insight and initial screening of projects. They can help prioritize your energy-efficiency projects. They can also advise you on the opening and closing dates of rebate program cycles.
To get your deposit back as soon as possible (with interest, if your utility will pay it), track both the amount of deposit you pay each utility and also the utility’s rules for getting it back. In Verisae’s experience, it can be a mistake to assume that all utilities will be proactive in returning your deposit money. You may have to shake the tree to get it.
Many of these companies become deeply involved with your business. They may work directly with your equipment vendors to secure required specifications and invoice documents. They can also help track down rebate incentive checks. They have a stake in getting your projects completed so they can be paid.
7. When you open or close locations, be sure your utility adjusts you to the most favorable rate as soon as possible. When you build new facilities, most utilities provide energy at temporary construction rates until you open for business. These rates per kWh are usually higher than normal because the site uses less energy during construction. You don’t benefit from volume pricing.
In addition, the utility may charge you a fee for getting power to your location. Fees can range from $10,000 to more than $1,000,000, depending on site requirements, ownership of feeders, primary and secondary supply needs and other factors. You can save money by ensuring that the transition from your construction rate to your normal operating rate occurs quickly. If you have similar facilities operating with the same utility service territory, you can use the billing history for your established facility to determine the best rate for the new one. If you don’t
For more information: Call us 612 455 2300 or [email protected]
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8 WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR ENERGY COST
have such information, you may have to estimate the best rate until you’ve accumulated a full year of baseline consumption data for the new facility. If you close, sell, or otherwise transfer responsibility for your operations at a location, take care to change your relationship with the utility as quickly as possible. Often when you transfer a location to a “non-operating property,” its energy use will change enough to be billed at different tariff rates.
8. Take advantage of other special programs your utilities may offer. In addition to rebate programs, many utilities offer free energy audits and special rate tariffs tailored to specific needs. Research the website of each utility company or contact your utility account representative to determine if they offer any services that will help save you money.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS This report has presented eight suggestions for reducing your energy costs on the supply or procurement side. Your ability to implement any of these recommendations requires ready access to good data that present a clear picture your energy costs and energy-consumption patterns over time. If you draw only one conclusion from this report, we hope it is this: If you aren’t already capturing all the data that appears on your utility bills, you will benefit from beginning to do so immediately. You may capture this data yourself or you may look outside your organization for help. Whichever path you choose is less important than getting started now. If you can’t capture your data effectively with internal resources and systems, we’d appreciate the opportunity to discuss how Verisae can help. With Verisae you can start as small as you like and go at whatever pace you like. To get started with us is probably faster and easier than you imagine. It is probably also less resource-intensive, less disruptive and less expensive.
INFORMATION RESOURCES For additional information on the Tariff Analysis Project (or TAP) of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, visit http://tariffs.lbl.gov/. For more information on time-sensitive pricing of electricity, see “Time-Based Energy Pricing,” a Verisae white paper by Rachel Schafer. Request a free copy at [email protected].
For more information: Call us 612 455 2300 or [email protected]
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8 WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR ENERGY COST
ABOUT VERISAE Verisae, Inc., is a software and services company that provides many of the systems and services mentioned in this report. Specifically, Verisae’s software applications address energy management, environmental management, and environmental asset management. Our professional services include utility-bill processing, utility-rate advisory services and utility rebatemanagement services. Verisae specializes in helping large, complex organizations that operate many buildings or sites. We work with more than 42 clients, many of which are global consumer brands with operations around the world. We focus on delivering results that generate high return on investment.
VERISAE WORLDWIDE HEADQUARTERS 100 North First Street, Suite 701A Minneapolis, MN 55403 USA
SRP™ and Sustainability Resource Planning™ are trademarks of Verisae Inc. ©2010 Verisae Inc. All rights reserved.
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8 WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR ENERGY COST
ABSTRACT For many large organizations that operate multiple facilities, the simplest, fastest and least expensive way to reduce the cost of energy is to refine your energy-procurement practices. Yet four key challenges may have prevented your organization from achieving the benefits you otherwise could: You may not be aware of all the opportunities. The topic can be complex, especially if you work with multiple utilities. You need accurate, detailed data. In many organizations, such data are not readily accessible in useful, actionable form. Maybe you haven’t yet dedicated the right resources to the task. Or you haven’t got the right processes or systems in place to a do a proper job. The ideas you will read here are generally fast, straightforward, nondisruptive and relatively low in cost to implement. You will get the most out of this report if you fit the following description: You are responsible for reducing the cost of energy in your organization. Your organization consumes more than 10,000,000 kWh of energy in a year. Your organization operates in more than a dozen buildings and possibly on multiple sites.
For more information: Call us 612 455 2300 or [email protected]
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8 WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR ENERGY COST
3 WAYS TO THINK ABOUT YOUR ENERGY COSTS Your energy-related costs fall into one of three categories: 1. The amount you pay your energy suppliers. 2. Your portfolio of energy sources, including utilities, on-site renewable energy, and purchased Renewable Energy Credits (or RECs). 3. The cost of maintaining the efficiency of equipment that consumes energy.
THE ENERGY SUPPLY SIDE VS. THE DEMAND SIDE This and subsequent reports in the series address four substantially different but interrelated ways to reduce total energy cost: • Pay less for the energy you buy. • Rebalance your energy sources. • Use less energy. • Find a more optimal balance between energy prices you pay and the energy you use. A separate report addresses ways to reduce the cost of maintaining the efficiency of equipment that consumes energy. We refer to the first two ways to reduce energy cost as supply-side methods. The third method is demand-side. The fourth is a hybrid of the first and third. This report focuses on ways to pay less for the energy you buy. You will also find here a brief discussion of the data, systems, processes, and resources you’re likely to need to implement the ideas suggested here.
8 WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR SUPPLY-SIDE ENERGY COSTS To reduce the cost of energy you buy, consider making some or all of the following changes to your energy-procurement practices: 1. Consolidate all your utility billing data in a single place where all parties in your organization can use it easily. 2. Pay the lowest-cost tariffs you can. 3. In deregulated markets, choose the lowest-cost provider for your usage patterns. 4. Avoid overpaying your utility. Find billing errors. 5. Take advantage of rebates, tax breaks and incentives. 6. Don’t let utilities sit on your deposit money.
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8 WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR ENERGY COST
7. When you open or close a facility, make sure your utility adjusts you to the most
THE BEAUTY OF MANAGING ENERGY WITH SPREADSHEETS Spreadsheets offer many advantages that are hard to beat:
favorable rate as soon as possible. 8. Take advantage of other special programs your utilities may offer. Congratulations if you’re already doing some or all of these things. Our experience with more than 40 companies suggests that you’re in the minority. You look to
• They are inexpensive, extremely flexible and almost universally available. • They are highly standardized. • The code for Microsoft Excel is mature, bug free, and exceptionally well documented. • Most people in large organizations already know how to use spreadsheets.
further reduce your energy costs on the demand side, as subsequent Verisae reports suggest. Even if you’re already doing many things well, please skim through some of the detailed discussions that follow. They may offer some nuances that can help you save additional money.
1. Consolidate utility billing data in a single place where all parties in your organization can use it easily.
High-quality, inexpensive training is widely available for those who don’t. • Customized worksheets are easy to build, even for people with no program-
Excel spreadsheets are the leading software application used to manage energy data in organizations of all sizes. There are plenty of solid reasons for their broad appeal (sidebar, p. 3).
ming skills. Consultants who can build
But they also have their limitations (sidebar, p. 4). To avoid these shortcomings,
spreadsheets are widely available at
you must invest a good bit of, well, energy. You must invest enough forethought
reasonable cost.
and coordination to use spreadsheets effectively. You may also have to come
• The reporting capabilities of spread-
to agreement across business functions with diverse needs. You may have to
sheets are vivid and highly flexible.
consider differences across legal or regulatory jurisdictions, state or national
• With a little help from your IT group,
borders, cultures and languages.
you can easily transfer data among
To help you navigate these complications, it may be wise to engage your IT
spreadsheets and other common busi-
organization or outside consultants. Even with such help, you can still get it
ness software applications.
wrong unless you work with someone who has previously built systems to manage energy. It takes about three times to start getting it right.
If you feel ready to move beyond these limitations, you have several alternatives that can take you far beyond what you can achieve with spreadsheets.
BEYOND SPREADSHEETS: DIGITAL SCANNING AND IMAGING OF BILLS One useful next step is to scan and digitize your utility bills so their details are easily accessible online. This enables you to capture all the data that can help you reduce your bills. It can also make such data available for convenient use by multiple functions within your organization—including, for example, your energy-procurement, energy-conservation, facilities, and Accounts Payable groups. Be aware that making digital images of all your utility bills available online is not the same as making all your energy-related data searchable or reportable for everyone who needs it. For more information: Call us 612 455 2300 or [email protected]
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8 WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR ENERGY COST
THE CHALLENGES OF MANAGING ENERGY WITH SPREADSHEETS
CREATING AN ONLINE DATABASE To make your utility billing data available for thorough reporting and analysis, you must capture it through keyboard entry or optical character recognition (or OCR).
For all their strengths, spreadsheets also have serious shortcomings. These are especially apparent for large organizations.
Your biggest challenges will be to come to consensus on the needs of all the groups who will use the data, to overcome any internal resource limitations you may face, and to eliminate data-entry errors.
If you’re trying to collect large amounts of data from many different sources and consolidate it into a single view, for example, spreadsheets can have these limitations: • They are hard to standardize and control across a big organization. • You are likely to have version-control
IF YOU’D RATHER NOT DO IT YOURSELF One alternative is to outsource the capture, presentation and reporting of data from your utility bills. In doing so you can choose from a wide variety of utility bill-processing service providers. Many can set up a software application that captures all your data and makes it eas-
issues with your data, your formulas
ily (but securely) available to everyone in your organization who needs it. Everyone
and your reports. It’s hard to keep
can get all the data they are authorized to see. They can prepare their own reports
track of what you’re looking at and
and analysis.
where it originated.
You can capture all the data that appears on your utility bills, and you can see it in a
• Spreadsheets are rarely tested and debugged as thoroughly as other software applications. • They are not good at handling very
presentation that’s consistent across all utilities, regardless of their billing formats. You can enter the data yourself or you can have the service provider do it for you. A very few service providers (including Verisae) will guarantee 100% data accuracy. You can pay your bills yourself or you can have your service provider do it for you.
large data volumes. • It’s easy to introduce errors and hard to
In some cases you need only a web browser. You don’t have to buy computer hard-
find them. One or two wrong keystrokes
ware, and you need not involve you IT organization in setting up databases or data-
can ruin the accuracy of several weeks’
transfer interfaces.
work. It can be hard to detect errors. • You have no audit trail. The numbers spreadsheets generate are hard to verify. • It can be hard to protect your data security.
2. In deregulated markets, choose the lowest-cost provider for your energy usage patterns. [Note: If all your operations are in regulated jurisdictions (sidebar, p. 6), this recommendation won’t save you money. Skip to suggestions 3 through 9.]
• You’re at risk of losing key data if you don’t follow rigorous backup procedures.
Seventeen U.S. states or districts currently enable retail buyers of electricity to reduce their cost by choosing their supplier from among two or more competing utilities. (By contrast, you have no choice of provider if you operate only in regulated states.)
Similar deregulation has also occurred for natural gas, but the opportunities for savings are generally smaller than for electricity.
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8 WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR ENERGY COST
The best utility for your needs is not always obvious. It may be that no single utility is the best choice for all your facilities, even within a tight geographic area. To evaluate the real cost for each utility you’re evaluating, you will need detailed information about all available tariff schedules from each utility. The rate structures of competing utilities may be hard to compare side by side because utilities often structure their rates in different ways. The total tariff always includes several components. In some deregulated markets, only some of these components may be deregulated. The others remain regulated. Any items directly related to the charge per kWh are most likely deregulated. Other fees are typically add-on charges for transmission, billing fees, etc. In comparing rates for two or more utilities, focus on the deregulated components. It is also important to understand what add-on fees deregulated suppliers may include in their rates. For example, some assess penalty fees for “line loss” (often called bandwidth fees). The bandwidth fee applies when a customer materially changes the amount of energy it uses. Suppliers charge such fees to protect themselves against possible losses. Utilities normally buy energy by hedging through forward contracts. If a customer unexpectedly increases its usage, the supplier may have to acquire additional energy to cover the increased demand. It may pay a higher price than the cost of the forward contract. On the other hand, if a customer uses less power than expected, the utility must sell its excess back into the market, possibly at a loss compared to what it would have charged the customer for the same power. To make apples-to-apples comparisons of rates, find the base-rate tariff for each utility. In addition to looking at base rates, also consider any rebates, incentives or credits that each utility may offer you to invest in improving your energy efficiency. (See more on this in Suggestion 3 below.) If your operation has flexibility to limit your energy load during periods of peak demand, consider which utilities offer the best incentives to do so. To decide which utility or combination of utilities presents the most economical alternative overall, you will need solid historical usage data for all your operations. The more granular and detailed your usage data, the more confident you can be in making your decisions. And the more money you are likely to save. Depending on the kind of supply contract you may execute with deregulated utilities, it may also be wise to dedicate a person to watch the market for ongoing opportunities to buy additional energy “layers” or “blocks” when favorable market conditions arise.
3. Pay the lowest-cost tariffs you can. Assuming you know which utility companies you will buy from, the next step is to be sure you select the lowest-cost tariff rates for which you qualify. For more information: Call us 612 455 2300 or [email protected]
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8 WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR ENERGY COST
This suggestion is usually not as easy or as obvious as it may appear. Utilities generally
WHAT DATA TO CAPTURE FROM YOUR UTILITY BILLS
provide multiple rate structures and leave it to you to decide which works best for you. Rate structures are complicated. Tariffs are not as straightforward as rates posted
In many organizations the Accounts Pay-
in simple pricing tables. They are algorithm for calculating the prices you will pay
able department is responsible for captur-
under certain conditions of usage.
ing data from utility bills. Tariffs often consist of multiple components, starting with a general-service tariff. GenUnderstandably, they often capture only the
eral-service tariffs vary by the size of the customer. Utilities usually define a customer’s
data they need for their own purposes, such
size by the value of its annual peak load.
as the amount paid and the date of payment. For effective energy management, you
Consider Time-Sensitive Rates
would be much better off capturing the fol-
In addition, a growing number of utilities offer prices that vary with the time of day.
lowing data at minimum:
Three such price structures are time-of-use rates (or TOU), critical peak pricing (or
• Name of utility
CPP) and real-time pricing (or RTP).
• Type of energy purchased
Under TOU rate structures, the amount you pay for electricity varies by the time of
• Monthly energy usage and appropriate
day, broken into daily peak and off-peak blocks. It is the most prevalent form of time-
units of measure (kWh or therms)
based rates, and many utilities now require their larger commercial and industrial
• Billing term dates
customers to be on them.
• Base tariff rate paid
If you can shed load during peak times (for example, at midday) you can save money
• Rebates or credits applied
compared to paying a flat, fixed rate.
• Taxes or other surcharges paid
Critical peak pricing is a relatively new variant of time-of-use. The key difference is
Electrical utilities may include as many as
that the utility adds a fee for usage during a critical peak period and levies a signifi-
275 different data elements on their bill-
cantly higher price for only a few days or hours a year.
ing statements. Natural-gas utilities may
Real-time pricing exposes customers to hourly price fluctuations, typically based
include as many as 250.
on real-time or day-ahead wholesale prices. According to a report by the Lawrence
As a rule, the more of this data you capture,
Berkeley National Laboratory, more than 70 utilities in the United States have of-
the better you’ll be able to manage your costs.
fered voluntary RTP tariffs permanently or in pilot programs. One challenge of RTP
For a more complete discussion of this topic, please visit http://www.verisae.com/ page/1/utility-bill-processing.jsp.
is that pricing can be volatile, so you have to be able to adjust your demand level quickly in response to rising prices. If you’re a big user of energy and can shift your load from one time of day to another, consider signing up for a time-sensitive rate.
Despite the complexity of tariffs, they can present big opportunities for cost reduction if you know how to interpret them and have detailed usage data to determine your best rate structure for each.
Check the Best Rate for Each Facility If you operate multiple facilities—even if only one or a few utilities serve them all—you may benefit from getting the most economical tariff rate for each facility. For more information: Call us 612 455 2300 or [email protected]
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8 WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR ENERGY COST
Your evaluation gets much more complex if your organization operates dozens, hun-
ENERGY DEREGULATION BY
dreds or thousands of locations in many states or even across national borders. The
JURISDICTION
number and variety of tariff schedules is much greater, and your volume of historical
Energy deregulation has occurred in these 17 U.S. jurisdictions: • Arizona
• New Hampshire
• Connecticut
• New Jersey
• Delaware
• New York
usage data must be quite large.
If You Operate a Large Number of Facilities It can be a challenge to collect and compare tariff information from dozens of utilities even within a single country. Unfortunately, no single database provides easy access to tariffs for all utilities across the United States. The Lawrence Berkeley
• District of Columbia • Ohio • Illinois
• Oregon
• Maine
• Pennsylvania
• Maryland
• Rhode Island
• Massachusetts
• Texas
• Michigan
• Virginia
National Laboratory has taken the first steps toward offering such a database through the Tariff Analysis Project (or TAP). The TAP database presents tariff data in a consistent manner across utilities, but it is incomplete. The good news is that the bigger and more complex your operation, the bigger your opportunity for savings.
If you operate in one or more of these
How to Get Your Utility-Rate Analysis Done
deregulated areas, you can probably benefit
You have three options for getting this utility rate analysis done:
from competition among energy providers who want your business.
1. You can do it yourself, using internal resources and spreadsheets or whatever systems you use now.
2. You can hire a service provider to do it for you each time you need it. 3. You can work with third-party software that enables you to do it whenever you like. With such systems in place, you can repeat the process any time you think your energy usage patterns or utility tariffs have changed enough for you to reevaluate your options. If you spend more than about $2 million a year on energy, you may find it economical to hire full-time or parttime analysts to check the potential savings for each rate scenario. If your internal systems are inadequate, if you face headcount constraints or if you think your opportunity for savings is relatively small, your best option may be to use third-party software that helps you make your decisions. It will probably cost less than you think.
4. Avoid overpaying. Find and eliminate billing errors. Do you have effective ways to identify and manage utility billing errors? If not, you can probably reduce your total energy spending by 1% to 3% by putting such measures in place. Utility billing errors are typically of one of two types: • The utility charges you a higher rate than you should be paying. • The utility makes a mistake reading your meter and charges you for more energy than you used.
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8 WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR ENERGY COST
In Verisae’s experience, the first error is much more common. But the more utilities
IF YOU DECIDE TO LOOK OUTSIDE FOR HELP
you work with, the more opportunity you will have to uncover errors of both kinds. Some organizations use their own resources or third-party services to conduct periodic
Your cost to implement a utility bill-process-
audits of their utility bills. Verisae has worked with one company that discovered a $3
ing system usually includes a small fee for
million billing error through such an audit.
initial setup and then a low fee for per invoice to scan the invoice, enter and verify the data, and make the data available on the Web.
Periodic audits can certainly help. But internal auditing groups may not be able to perform audits as often as would be best for catching most errors. Any audit is timeconsuming and resource-intensive if you don’t have easy access to utility data. And
The fee you pay per invoice can be lower
audits can be expensive if you use outside services to conduct them.
than the price of a cup of gourmet coffee. It’s probably also lower than your internal cost.
Use Systems to Monitor Your Utility Bills
Providers of utility-bill processing services
As an alternative to performing audits, you can also set up systems and or services
can implement within two to three months.
that will catch such errors as they occur. This approach has these advantages:
During that time you work with your utilities to redirect their bills to the service provider’s
• It monitors for errors constantly rather than periodically. • You can catch errors earlier so you have better cash flow and can put your money
post-office box. The service provider can either pay the utility bills on your behalf or can set up a web-
to better use. • You can avoid negative effects on quarterly financial statements.
services arrangement with your Accounts
• It may cost less than periodic auditing.
Payable department. You can retain control
You may find it most cost effective to work with a third-party vendor that can pro-
over the bill-payment process if you like.
vide utility-bill processing services for you (sidebar, p. 7).
With an effective system in place your
5. Take full advantage of rebates, tax breaks and other incentives.
provider can set up rules to: • hold payment for bills that are more than 25% higher than the previous month’s bill
Is your organization overlooking ways to get help in paying for your energy-conservation initiatives? In many cases you can get some or even all the cash you need without applying for
• hold payment for bills that do not match your master list of facilities • contact the utility if the bill does not arrive when expected.
loans. You may need to look no further than your energy utility, which might reimburse part or all of your costs. Many electrical and gas utilities offer their customers rebates to encourage investment in energy-conservation measures. The payments cover equipment such as
Such rules can identify anomalies to help
heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems, lighting, motors, occupancy sen-
you avoid billing errors and late fees.
sors, cooking equipment and more.
Lots of Money Available How common are such rebates? They are common enough to make it worthwhile for you to do some research. U.S. electric and gas utilities collectively offered more than $3 billion dollars to corporations in 2008.
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8 WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR ENERGY COST
Utilities offer these programs because their state regulators require them to do
CHALLENGES IN MANAGING REBATES
so. Ultimately, it is more economical and better for the environment for utilities to motivate you to reduce your energy demand rather than building more production or
Big organizations face special challenges in
distribution capacity.
participating in rebate programs:
To compensate for the utilities’ investment in helping you reduce your demand,
• Lack of standardization. More than
state regulatory agencies pay the utilities a guaranteed rate of return. This return
2,000 utility companies operate in the
is in addition to the money utilities can recover beyond the cost of these programs.
United States. The more of these utili-
It means you ultimately pay for such rebates and incentive programs through your
ties you work with, the more time and
monthly bill, whether you take advantage of them or not.
resources you must invest to understand your options. You must contact
You Pay for Rebates Even If You Don’t Use Them
the rebate department in each utility,
If you don’t take advantage of these programs, it’s almost like paying multiple
research what equipment qualifies for
times—first through your bill, next through your failure to get some of that money
rebates, and obtain the forms you need.
back, and third through your failure to save money by reducing your energy use.
• Varied requirements. Some utilities require you to submit plans in advance. Some mandate facility inspections both before and after a project. In some cases you must submit an application before you install equipment. In others you can submit it within six months af-
Worse yet, you also pay for the benefits your competitors can get by taking fuller advantage than you do. In addition to mandating rebates and incentives, most state governments invest heavily in making money available for Energy Efficiency Resource Standards (or EERS). EERS provides a market-based way for states to encourage more efficient generation, transmission, and use of electricity and natural gas.
ter. It can be hard to meet such diverse
EERS establish targets for utilities to save energy, They also establish ways for utili-
program requirements.
ties to help their customers achieve and document energy savings. Laws or regula-
• Timing. Rebate programs operate on different cycles. One utility may run its program from June through July, while
tions that create EERS or EERS-like programs are either in place or are in place in Texas, Hawaii, Nevada, Connecticut, California, Vermont, Colorado and Pennsylvania. They are soon to be implemented in Illinois and New Jersey.
others from January through December.
If you haven’t already taken a close look at EERS in the states where you operate, it
Programs often change from year to
may pay well for you to do so now. But be forewarned: EERS involves a fair amount
year, so each new year can bring new
of complexity. You’ll need a strategy for how to manage your participate without con-
incentive amounts and changes to the
suming too much internal resource.
kinds of equipment that qualify.
Consider Possible Tax Incentives Finally, most states allow tax exemptions for utility costs to organizations engaged in “production and manufacturing.” If you can show that your facilities do either, the related portion of your utility bill should be tax exempt. In many states you can recover the exemption up to seven years after the fact. A good audit of such opportunities can provide an immediate payback that may be quite large.
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8 WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR ENERGY COST
If you have adequate staff resources and the desire to explore your options on your
IF YOU DON’T MANAGE REBATES FOR YOURSELF
own, start your research by visiting the websites of your utilities and your state energy offices.
Multiple service providers enable you to out-
If you choose to hire a service provider (sidebar), it’s important to find one that un-
source some or all of the effort of managing
derstands utility rebate programs and also understands the mechanical and electri-
utility rebates. They research the kinds of
cal specifications of energy-consuming equipment. Such knowledge and experience
equipment that qualifies for rebates from
can help you in two ways. It can guide you toward alternate equipment that may help
each utility. They also know the utilities’ pro-
reduce your energy consumption in the future. And it can help you secure larger
cesses for obtaining rebate payments.
rebates from your utilities.
Outsourcing of rebate processing has multiple benefits. Experienced service providers
6. Don’t let utilities sit on your deposit money.
can offer turnkey services that leverage
When you open a new facility or establish a new energy account, most utilities will
their relationships and their years of experi-
require you to pay a deposit to ensure they will get their money even if you miss pay-
ence working with utility program managers.
ments. These deposits can be in the tens of thousands of dollars. Some utilities will
Service providers often offer incentive-based
accept a surety bond or letter of credit in place of a cash deposit.
payment structures whereby you pay them only a percentage of the monies you receive from your utilities.
Rules vary by utility, but most utilities require you keep your deposit on file until you’ve established that you consistently pay your bills on time. They may keep your deposit for a year or longer.
Such providers can also offer insight and initial screening of projects. They can help prioritize your energy-efficiency projects. They can also advise you on the opening and closing dates of rebate program cycles.
To get your deposit back as soon as possible (with interest, if your utility will pay it), track both the amount of deposit you pay each utility and also the utility’s rules for getting it back. In Verisae’s experience, it can be a mistake to assume that all utilities will be proactive in returning your deposit money. You may have to shake the tree to get it.
Many of these companies become deeply involved with your business. They may work directly with your equipment vendors to secure required specifications and invoice documents. They can also help track down rebate incentive checks. They have a stake in getting your projects completed so they can be paid.
7. When you open or close locations, be sure your utility adjusts you to the most favorable rate as soon as possible. When you build new facilities, most utilities provide energy at temporary construction rates until you open for business. These rates per kWh are usually higher than normal because the site uses less energy during construction. You don’t benefit from volume pricing.
In addition, the utility may charge you a fee for getting power to your location. Fees can range from $10,000 to more than $1,000,000, depending on site requirements, ownership of feeders, primary and secondary supply needs and other factors. You can save money by ensuring that the transition from your construction rate to your normal operating rate occurs quickly. If you have similar facilities operating with the same utility service territory, you can use the billing history for your established facility to determine the best rate for the new one. If you don’t
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8 WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR ENERGY COST
have such information, you may have to estimate the best rate until you’ve accumulated a full year of baseline consumption data for the new facility. If you close, sell, or otherwise transfer responsibility for your operations at a location, take care to change your relationship with the utility as quickly as possible. Often when you transfer a location to a “non-operating property,” its energy use will change enough to be billed at different tariff rates.
8. Take advantage of other special programs your utilities may offer. In addition to rebate programs, many utilities offer free energy audits and special rate tariffs tailored to specific needs. Research the website of each utility company or contact your utility account representative to determine if they offer any services that will help save you money.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS This report has presented eight suggestions for reducing your energy costs on the supply or procurement side. Your ability to implement any of these recommendations requires ready access to good data that present a clear picture your energy costs and energy-consumption patterns over time. If you draw only one conclusion from this report, we hope it is this: If you aren’t already capturing all the data that appears on your utility bills, you will benefit from beginning to do so immediately. You may capture this data yourself or you may look outside your organization for help. Whichever path you choose is less important than getting started now. If you can’t capture your data effectively with internal resources and systems, we’d appreciate the opportunity to discuss how Verisae can help. With Verisae you can start as small as you like and go at whatever pace you like. To get started with us is probably faster and easier than you imagine. It is probably also less resource-intensive, less disruptive and less expensive.
INFORMATION RESOURCES For additional information on the Tariff Analysis Project (or TAP) of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, visit http://tariffs.lbl.gov/. For more information on time-sensitive pricing of electricity, see “Time-Based Energy Pricing,” a Verisae white paper by Rachel Schafer. Request a free copy at [email protected].
For more information: Call us 612 455 2300 or [email protected]
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8 WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR ENERGY COST
ABOUT VERISAE Verisae, Inc., is a software and services company that provides many of the systems and services mentioned in this report. Specifically, Verisae’s software applications address energy management, environmental management, and environmental asset management. Our professional services include utility-bill processing, utility-rate advisory services and utility rebatemanagement services. Verisae specializes in helping large, complex organizations that operate many buildings or sites. We work with more than 42 clients, many of which are global consumer brands with operations around the world. We focus on delivering results that generate high return on investment.
VERISAE WORLDWIDE HEADQUARTERS 100 North First Street, Suite 701A Minneapolis, MN 55403 USA
SRP™ and Sustainability Resource Planning™ are trademarks of Verisae Inc. ©2010 Verisae Inc. All rights reserved.
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