The old adage, “You can’t manage what you don’t measure” has never been more relevant than in today’s environment of reducing operating costs in commercial facilities. Whether you are an HVAC service salesperson making claims about how your service reduces energy utility bills or a Project Salesperson trying to justify a capital retrofit project based on projected energy savings, how do you know if your claims are valid? What if they aren’t? What’s at stake? Your credibility? Your reputation? Future work?
The Risk
Let’s face it, there is a lot at stake when you make claims that are unsubstantiated. Despite the risk, the industry has been making these types of claims for years, particularly in the service side of the business. Armed with ASHRAE statistics, service salespeople have been telling facilities professionals that their preventive maintenance service will help to reduce overall operating expenses. Some HVAC companies have developed elaborate sales presentations to illustrate the potential for savings. Over time these systems have been copied and mimicked to the point that their customers now, for the most part, discount such claims.
The Reward
With the advent of affordable measurement and verification (M&V) systems that continuously monitor energy usage at the meter, HVAC contractors now have the tools they need to identify, correct and monitor energy waste in buildings. While our BuildingAdvice™ Benchmarking, Assessment and Audit tools help to automate the waste identification phase of and energy services offering, M&V services ensures that the savings claims you made in your sales process can be measured, monitored and delivered. A successful M&V strategy will build your credibility and reputation for delivering on your promises and provide the foundation for ongoing work with your clients.
How Does it Work?
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Very simply, our BuildingAdvice Verify™ system uses a pulse output from a smart meter or a CT installed at the panel to measures real-time, high-resolution energy consumption. The pulse output connects to a gateway that wirelessly uploads usage data to our data center. The data is “crunched” and stored on servers. The actual performance data is compared to the historical performance baseline established for the building. A report card is generated each day to alert you to any issues in the building. Using sophisticated bin data modeling technology developed by the Department of Energy, Verify™ normalizes the usage data for time of day, time of year and variations in outside weather. So if you get an alert (a red light on report card for the day), it means someone did something in the building that is wasting energy and is outside the budget regardless of the weather.
Don’t Sell It, Package It
Rather than attempting to sell M&V services as a stand-alone product, we believe it is better to package it as a value-added service with your high value preventive maintenance agreements and bundle with your larger retrofit projects. Let’s look at the economics of the sale. A typical install might be $3,000 to $5,000 per year to the end customer. If a building’s annual energy spend is $100,000 per year, the cost is only 3 to 5% of that total. This is well within the Department of Energy’s conclusion that 5 to 30% savings can be achieved through proactive monitoring of energy use. Many of the buildings you service spend much more than that, making the ROI case even stronger.
Likewise, in bundling M&V services with your retrofit projects think of the advantage you will have in competitive bid situations. When you can explain to the end customer that, not only have you quantified the expected return on investment for the project, you will also install a system as part of the project that will measure the actual savings delivered, provide quarterly reports documenting the savings, and provide an early warning system to alert you if the projected savings are not being delivered, your project proposals will stand out.
A key factor in ensuring that the M&V services you offer bring value to your customers is providing periodic reporting on the financial impact you have on their facilities. To assist you in this we offer a range of service packages to help you provide timely, impactful information that will strengthen your relationship with your customers for years to come. Now you don’t have to incur the risk of making unsubstantiated claims – you can have the proof needed to back up your savings estimates.