White House Energy Datapalooza: First Fuel

First Fuel delivers energy efficiency analytics to commercial building owners, giving them the insight to manage and upgrade their buildings effectively.

Transcript:

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Speaker:
Good morning.

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Yes, it's still morning,
doesn't feel like it.

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But I wanted to switch
gears this morning,

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after some great discussion
about consumer energy efficiency

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and data infrastructure, we're
going to be talking about

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commercial energy efficiency.

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And we're going to get local.

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We're going to get really
local and talk about this

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particular building.

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Okay, thank you.

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So we're in the Eisenhower
Executive building,

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it's a building this was built
in 1888 and went through a major

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renovation in 1999.

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The building is 660,000 square
feet and it houses primarily

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offices and administrative
support staff.

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Anyone want to guess what the
energy bill annually for this

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building is?

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Audience Member:
$4 million.

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Speaker:
That's pretty close.

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It's about $3 million annually,
and that comprises electricity,

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steam and natural gas.

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Is that too high or is
that just about right?

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Or asked another way, is
this building using energy as

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efficiently as it possibly can.

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And the way one would find that
out today is by getting a highly

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qualified energy engineer
into this building,

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take stock of all the equipment,
interview all the facility

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managers, look at past
historical energy bills,

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and roughly about a
month or six weeks later,

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deliver a report that identifies
how and where energy goes into

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this building and what
actions can be taken to reduce

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energy consumption.

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Let's extrapolate that out
to the rest of the country.

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There are 5.2 million commercial
buildings in the United States,

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they roughly consume about
20% of our nation's total

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energy consumption.

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Out of those buildings, from
the smallest pizza store to the

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largest convention center,
studies have shown that anywhere

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from 40% to 50% of that
energy is routinely wasted.

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The Better Buildings Challenge,
which you've heard about this

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morning, as well as
many mandates by city,

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state and local governments are
aiming to reduce consumption in

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commercial buildings between
20% and 30% in the next decade.

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So if it takes about a month to
do one energy audit to inform a

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building owner what they can
do to reduce consumption,

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it would take us 400,000 person
years just to inform building

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owners what the problem they
have with their buildings is and

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what they can do to
reduce consumption.

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And at that point, you haven't
saved a single kilowatt hour.

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You've just informed
people what they can do.

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So we're not going to meet
our energy efficiency goals,

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certainly not in commercial
buildings in 400,000 years.

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Okay?

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We have to do something
different, in fact,

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we have to do something that's
exponentially different.

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And that's what First Fuel
was started to accomplish.

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We are leveraging energy data to
dramatically change the game in

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how energy efficiency is
achieved in the commercial

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buildings sector.

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So if President Eisenhower
were alive today,

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arguably he would
press the blue button,

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but a doctor would look at the
data from a whole body MRI and

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read that information to
identify what ails the President

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and come up with remedies
to address those ailments.

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Most commercial buildings
like this one today collect

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information every 15 minutes
about the consumption of the

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whole building.

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And a chart like this
-- so I have a pointer?

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Sorry.

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Can I go back?

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There we go.

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So a chart like this captures
data every 15 minutes,

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and every pixel on that is
a consumption data point

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color-coded to identify what the
intensity of the consumption is

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at that point, from the lowest
point of consumption to the

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highest point of consumption.

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So across -- every single
line represents 24 hours of

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consumption, and that entire
chart represents a years' worth

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of historical consumption.

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Just like a doctor reads
the whole body MRI,

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First Fuel's analytics scan
through and identify patterns of

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usage in that
consumption history,

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such as when do people
come, when do people leave,

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when do the systems in the
building turn on and off,

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which days are occupied,
which days are unoccupied,

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and for every hour of every
day for the whole year,

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we can correlate how the
consumption changes as hourly

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temperature, hourly humidity,
hourly sun and hourly wind

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conditions change.

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So now, without ever setting
foot in the building,

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we can for this building, not
based on what the building

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should be doing from
theoretical models,

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not based on what other
buildings like it are doing,

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but based on its actual
energy consumption,

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we can now identify where
the energy in this building

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went last year.

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For example, 45% of the
consumption in this building

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went into HVAC, about
15% went into lighting.

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Benchmark each one of those
end uses and analyze them to

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identify which end use is
efficient and inefficient,

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and come up with recommendations
to address energy conservation

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in the building.

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In this building, we found 15%
savings opportunities on the

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electric side, and 24% savings
opportunity on the district

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steam side, collectively half a
million dollars worth of energy

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savings in large part just
through a set of operational

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changes that do not require
any retrofit investment.

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Energy data has the ability to
unlock energy efficiency in the

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commercial buildings sector
at extremely large scale.

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Besides the data that
I just showed you,

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which is the meter
data from a utility,

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or in this case from the GSA, we
used open data from the weather

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service and we used GIS mapping
data to understand the physical

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characteristics of the building.

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So without ever
stepping foot on site,

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we now are working with the GSA
in the recent pilot identified 4

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and a half million dollars'
worth of savings by analyzing 13

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million square feet of office
space that represented $1.2

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billion -- 1.2 billion KBTs
of consumption annually.

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So the way we get from where we
are today and to where we would

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like to get to within ten years
is by analyzing meter data and

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unlocking that data through
smart analytics to drive

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repeatable, trustable
and bankable savings.

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And that's how we're going to
make energy efficiency the

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true first fuel.

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Thank you.

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(applause)