Whole-City AEI Energy Maps™ in Partnership with U.S. Department of Energy Better Communities^® Alliance

Advanced Energy Intelligence is pleased to work with the U.S. DOE Better Buildings Initiative to deliver energy maps for partner cities in the Better Communities Alliance. An AEI Energy Map is a customized and comprehensive tool that allows multiple users in cities, towns, campuses and large commercial portfolios to participate in a data-driven process to manage energy and water usage across a large portfolio.

Visualize Your Existing Energy Data in a New Way

No new hardware or software is required. Your utility billing and interval data supports an interactive visual explorer for your team.

• For the portfolio with monthly utility billing data, an AEI Energy Map can show energy and water usage in terms of commodity usage, MMBtu, cost per square foot, EUI, CO2e, and many more metrics all delivered in an easy-to-use interactive visualization. Show comparisons and ranks by building, department, year, season, or any other metrics supported by the data. Weather normalizations and occupancy considerations are standard features.
• For the facilities with time-of-use utility meter interval data, drill down into specific buildings to profile and track peak demands and usage, the ratios for night and weekend setback, relationship to the coincident grid loads and time-based weather to see how individual buildings are being operated. Time-of-use data is the single best way to confirm building schedules and prioritize energy conservation projects.
• With real-time main meter tracking – combined with readily available real-time grid demand and weather – individual building operators can receive real-time text and email alerts for RTO/ISO peak events and weather forecasts that can help you minimize capacity charges.
• Beyond the main meter, an AEI Energy Map can integrate with your building automation system data to measure and track building performance and comfort down to individual HVAC assets. For those buildings with the best potential, you have an economical way to support your next retro-commissioning or re-commissioning project, establish baselines for capital improvement, and ultimately achieve continuous commissioning to keep your buildings tuned and certified with LEED v4, the WELL Building Standard®, and updated AEE and ASHRAE practices.

Your Team Decides How To Use It

Our Energy Map is designed to let you explore the data in ways that are meaningful to you and your organization. Are you interested in visualizing electricity usage in summer? Or maybe you want to know the MMBtu per square foot for the schools versus the police and fire departments? With smart filtering, you’ll have the summary answers and drill-down capability into the supporting data, all with just a few clicks on the Map.

• It's delivered over the Internet to any modern desktop browser. You control who has access to the Map and the underlying data. Whether you decide to use it internally for planning purposes or make it available to the public is entirely up to you.
• It's customized to the capabilities of your datasets. If you have a particular coding pattern for building types, or have specific departmental accounting requirements or multiple commodity providers, those aspects are incorporated.
• Weather and RTO/ISO data are incorporated as standard features. Monthly updates keep the AEI Energy Map relevant throughout the year.
• For facilities with real-time data feed capability, we’ll work with your IT department to insure that the data flows on a reliable basis with no manual intervention.

Minimum Requirements

An AEI Energy Map has only a few minimum requirements meant to insure a successful implementation for Partner cities:

• A city, town, campus or commercial portfolio should have somewhere between 25 and 10,000 properties (buildings) with known physical locations and square footage. Attributes such as building type, construction year, and accounting or other classifications are highly desirable but not required.
• The utility data should be uniform and identify providers and consumption by at least month and year. Any level of detail is acceptable so long as the data has a consistent format from all sources. Source data should be provided as CSV/XLS or other expected formats. Contact us for information about EDI and web service integrations.

For examples of AEI Energy Maps in action, please take a look at:

• City of Boston Utility Data (2011-2015). The datasets for Boston featured monthly utility consumption and cost data by commodity and provider, along with the minimum set of building parameters that lets us locate properties on a map and know how big they are. With over 700,000 rows of data, a very discerning Map is possible.
• New York City Energy and Water Data Disclosure for Local Law 84 (2014). This Energy Map was built using 5 annual LL84 disclosure datasets combined with the PLUTO land use database containing over 70 data elements for properties in the City. The consolidated view of the datasets features EUI, emissions and water consumption for over 16,000 buildings in NYC for the years 2011 through 2015.
• Judicial Council of California. This work in progress shows energy and water data for over 150 courthouses in California, including a simulation of electric meter interval data analytics and visual real-time main meter flags color-coded to coincide with peak demand conditions.

Application Process for BCA Partner Cities

July 2017

Download the AEI Webinar Presentation to DOE BCA Partners (July 12 and 19, 2017).

As mentioned in the webinar, Partner cities should apply to AEI and other Affiliates directly and before August 4, 2017. To learn more about the BCA offering and to download the application form, visit the U.S. DOE Commitments for Better Communities web page.

For more general information about the U.S. DOE Better Buildings Initiative and the Better Communities Alliance, visit betterbuildingsinitiative.energy.gov/bca.

For more information or if you have questions about the application process, write to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call us at (800) 971-1124.