Signals from the energy edge.
Notes on utility data, trustworthy systems, interoperability and the grid. How we think about the hard parts, and what we're building.
Unbundled vs bundled utility rates: what each model hides
Bundled rates fold every cost into one number. Unbundled rates split them apart. Each choice changes what you can see, verify, and manage on a utility bill.
Load factor: how the shape of your demand drives cost
Load factor measures how evenly a facility uses power, and it quietly sets your effective price per kilowatt-hour. Here is how to read it and why it matters.
Coincident peak and capacity charges explained
Capacity and coincident peak charges are set by your demand during a few grid peak hours, then billed all year. Here is how they work and why they surprise finance teams.
Detecting anomalies in energy consumption data
Baseload creep, equipment left on, after-hours spikes, and meter faults hide in your interval data. Here is what an energy anomaly is, the simple detection methods practitioners actually use, and why clean, complete data comes first.
Connecting utility data to your energy tools: one clean dataset, many destinations
Energy teams feed utility bills and interval data into benchmarking, feasibility, BI, and emissions tools. The real bottleneck is getting clean, standardized data out of many utilities first. Here is how the shared foundation works.
Building energy and utility dashboards in Power BI from utility data
A practical guide for Canadian energy and facility teams: how to model meter and bill data, avoid the garbage-in problem, choose refresh options, and build Power BI measures that hold up.
Automating ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager: keeping utility data current
Portfolio Manager scores are only as good as the monthly meter data behind them. Here is how to keep every meter, every month, current without hand keying bills across a portfolio.
Using utility data in RETScreen: getting clean, complete consumption and cost data ready to import
RETScreen Expert only works as well as the utility data you feed it. Here is what the performance analysis and M&V module needs, why weather normalization and a clean baseline matter, and how to stop hand-keying numbers off bills and portals.
Energy data for hospitals and healthcare facilities
Why healthcare runs so energy intensive, and how to track, benchmark, and weather-normalize energy across a hospital and clinic portfolio using clean, validated utility data.
Campus energy data for universities and colleges
Managing energy data across a multi-building campus: central plants, submeters, benchmarking buildings by use type, and capital planning from clean, validated utility data.
Energy tracking for school boards and districts
How school boards and districts track energy and utility bills across hundreds of buildings for budgeting, benchmarking, and capital planning with many meters and many bills.
Automating utility bill tracking across a portfolio
The real cost of tracking utility bills for many buildings in spreadsheets, and how automated capture, validation, and error detection change the economics.
Utility data for real estate ESG reporting
How property owners and managers turn utility bills and meter data into clean data for ESG, GRESB, and net-zero reporting across a portfolio, including tenant metering.
Measurement and verification data for retrofit programs
The utility and meter data pipeline behind M&V and retrofit savings programs: baselines, ongoing reads, and the normalization inputs savings math depends on.
Utility data collection for energy consultants and ESCOs
How energy and sustainability consultants collect utility data across many client accounts using authorized connections, Green Button, and bill digitization.
Municipal energy and GHG reporting
How municipalities manage energy and greenhouse gas data across corporate buildings and fleets, meet Ontario broader public sector reporting rules, and build reliable reporting workflows.
Build vs buy: utility and energy data management
The real cost of building an in-house utility-data pipeline versus buying a platform: labor, maintenance, data quality, and when each choice actually makes sense.
What is an EMIS (energy management information system)?
A plain guide to what an EMIS is and does, how it differs from a BAS/BMS and from ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, and why clean data is the prerequisite.
Utility data for multi-site retail portfolios
Hundreds of stores across many utilities and rate structures. How to standardize, benchmark, and allocate energy cost, spot outlier stores, and support ESG for a chain.
Handling customer utility data securely and compliantly
Utility data is personal information. A Canada-first guide to consent, PII, data minimization, encryption, retention, and frameworks like PIPEDA, SOC 2, and ISO 27001.
Interval data vs monthly bills: what each one is good for
Monthly bills settle what you owe; interval data explains why. A practical look at granularity, storage tradeoffs, and when you need 15-minute reads or just the bill.
Building a utility data warehouse for energy and emissions
A practical data model for utility bills and meter reads: accounts, meters, service points, commodities, slowly changing tariffs, lineage, and serving BI and ESG.
Building tune-ups: low-cost operational fixes, verified with data
What a building tune-up inspects and corrects, the low and no-cost operational fixes it finds, reporting cycles, and how weather-normalized utility data proves the savings.
The energy KPIs facility teams should track from utility data
The energy KPIs facility teams should track from utility data, from peak demand and load factor to cost avoidance, plus how to set targets and build a simple monthly scorecard.
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