Controlling Facility Energy Costs > Combining Approaches to Energy Cost Control > Demand Side Cost Control (Conservation) > Energy Auditing and The Energy Management Plan

Twenty years ago, a building owner who paid for an energy audit got a paper report centered on a list of opportunities. The information may have been good at the time the report was delivered, but it had a short shelf life. Over time (sometimes not very long at all), technology changes, material price changes, and utility rate changes would combine to make the results obsolete. It was time-consuming or sometimes impossible to rearrange and present the results in a way that management could relate to. There was no way to drill down and examine the underlying pieces of data on which the results were based. And there was no easy way to analyze alternate financing and phasing scenarios. The data was static: what the customer saw is what the customer got.

More recently, a building owner could expect to get information in electronic form. It was more convenient to handle and would probably include spreadsheets and CAD drawings, but it did not solve the basic problem. If the Owner wanted something other than the report format, there would be a significant chore in manipulating and analyzing data. The more buildings, equipment and utility accounts, the bigger the job. And still underlying variables like marginal utility rates and technology options couldn’t be adjusted with confidence.

The ManagingEnergy process is used to produce thorough energy audit reports, but it does a lot more. Computers are good at assembling actionable results from piles of dynamic data. And that’s what ManagingEnergy has been carefully designed to do. Change the cost of electricity, and the impact ripples through the financial reports. Select a different type of standard light fixture upgrade, either in a few locations or throughout the building portfolio, and watch the lighting reports change automatically. Assign your opportunities to fast payback and capital renewal scenarios, and produce two sets of executive financial summaries. And of course, you can download your data any time into spreadsheets, text files, or Microsoft Access database files to work outside the ManagingEnergy system.

The Energy Management Plan

The last stage of the planning process is preparing a financial master plan that aggregates the selected opportunities for each facility and across the entire portfolio. ManagingEnergy summary reports are perfect at this stage. Capital upgrade and asset renewal projects can be added as you’re developing the plan, to broaden the benefits of the implementation program. ManagingEnergy can help assess the available financing options to determine which is best for your particular situation. The result is a concise yet thoroughly researched plan bringing together the costs, benefits, and a roadmap to proceed.