Note to Self:  Find Some Energy Cost Savings

EnergyCAP Version 7’s latest energy efficiency feature–email report self-subscription–is both simple and powerful. It’s like a “Note to Self” reminder to look for cost savings.

Here’s a great example: I self-subscribed to Report-13, a powerful new analytical report that uses a rolling quadratic regression of use and cost vs. mean daily temperature. The analysis spots bills that are “outliers,” that is, bills that have excessive standard deviations from the predicted values. The weather-adjusted outlier approach is far superior to old-school “flag if 25% higher than last year” audit methods, because it greatly reduces false positives and lets you focus on a short list of cost-saving candidates.

You can set the subscription to daily—email me just those outlier bills that were entered yesterday—or other frequencies. You set the report filters, so you can establish cost minimums—ignore bills costing under $100, for example—or set different thresholds based on commodity, vendor, cost, or other factors.

The result? Fewer false positives, which means more time spent on recovering cost savings and much less time spent on fruitless investigations of valid bills.

Some other great ideas for report subscriptions:

• Email the concise one-page “Monthly Building Manager Report” to each building manager on the 15^th of each month.
• Email the “Two-Year Comparison” ranking report to each Department Head once a quarter, showing how Departments compare in consumption and usage reductions.
• Email the “Missing and Overlapping Bills” report to Accounting at month-end, indicating meters that have gaps and overlaps in data coverage.
• Email the “Anticipated Bills Not Yet Processed” spreadsheet to Accounting each week, highlighting bills that may be lost in the mail and at risk of incurring pesky late fees.

Give it a try! These Notes to Self may prove even more valuable than your usual notes, you know, those reminders about the upcoming anniversary or important birthday.