While monthly energy use data is essential for benchmarking, interval data (e.g., usage in 15-minute or hourly periods) provides a wealth of additional insights on how a facility uses energy. For many years, Con Ed’s largest customers have had access to such data via meters that send data to the utility via telephone landlines or more recently via cellular communications. Often sporadic due to metering and communication problems, that process will soon be consigned to the technology scrap heap by new smart meters under the utility’s Automated Metering Infrastructure (AMI) program.

The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program was created and is maintained by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), a private non-governmental organization. While a step toward improving general sustainability in buildings, the “energy” in the LEED name led many people to believe it would place energy efficiency high on its list of suggested activities. Fossil fuel consumption by buildings, either directly or via electricity use, is one of the largest contributors to the greenhouse gases that impact climate change, the foremost challenge to our future sustainability.

Benchmarking shows a building’s relative energy efficiency compared to its past usage, and similar facilities in the same geographic area. Such comparisons may help a building manager grasp potential savings if energy system upgrades were applied. Thousands of buildings are now participating in voluntary and mandatory benchmarking programs. Many have found the process useful, and some may find that it offers a few surprises.

Solar power is a renewable choice that many of our clients have embraced as part of a slew of solutions to lower their carbon footprint.  However, what happens when it’s cloudy outside, and the sun does not shine?  Bacteria-powered solar cells may be the solution!

On behalf of the team at 5, I am pleased to forward our market letter for the second quarter of 2018. It was a record quarter for significant market and regulatory developments. To keep this letter a manageable length, we focus on three issues that are particularly important: (i) the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) carbon tax proposal, (ii) various Federal efforts to effectively re-regulate competitive energy markets, and (iii) the 2020/2021 PJM capacity auction and what results say about the current chaos in the deregulated energy markets.

On behalf of the team at 5, I am pleased to forward our market letter for the first quarter of 2018. This letter focuses on a change taking place in the energy market and its impact on our clients. Historically, energy procurement was separated from facility operations. A procurement team and/or an advisor worked with competitive retail suppliers to manage commodity prices. In parallel, engineers worked with an operations team to reduce energy consumption. Today, large energy users can no longer approach energy procurement and facilities management as separate and distinct tasks – a cost effective energy management strategy must integrate facilities management and procurement. In this letter we discuss some of the factors that have driven this change and the importance of integrating procurement and energy management.

On-site battery power storage is a hot new energy option, but it does not come trouble-free. As Captain Kirk learned in Star Trek’s “Troubles with Tribbles” episode, some problems are easier to solve than others.

At this time, most utility batteries are being installed to manage frequency regulation, provide synchronized reserves, and other ancillary services of interest solely to grid operators. How much a retail power customer may save by installing a battery system, however, depends on a customer’s utility tariff rate, and how the power storage system is operated.

Bill Broadhurst has been Princeton University’s energy manager since 2009. During those 8 years, he has handled challenges that range from raising efficiency in buildings built before the American Revolution, to designing state-of-the-art systems for 21st-century facilities.

Princeton’s 10 million square foot campus in New Jersey has an advanced central plant, equipped with dual-fueled boilers and cogeneration, variable-speed pumps and motors, thermal energy storage, and free cooling through its cooling towers. Cogeneration, Thermal Storage, and Steam-driven turbine chillers minimize peak demand charges for cooling, and a centralized geothermal system is on the drawing boards. Power delivery to the campus from the local utility is on a high-tension real-time pricing tariff, with supply purchased from a competitive third-party supplier.

Imagine a friendly Borg that, instead of forcing assimilation, says, “Come join our Collective, and let us profit together.” That’s essentially what the New York Public Service Commission (NY PSC) is saying through its Reforming the Energy Vision (REV) process. Distributed Energy Resources (DERs), such as on-site solar and combined heat and power (CHP) plants, would participate in local grids to produce and trade power.

We have often wondered, ‘Does life exist on other planets?’ Although we may not have infinite answers to extraterrestrial life on other planets, one concept that does exist out there is potential energy. Specifically, the possibility for lunar-based solar power (LSP).

According to a 2017 Forbes article, the concept of LSP involves developing solar power collecting stations on the Moon’s surface, which would convert sunlight into electricity and be wirelessly transmitted to Earth. Supporting this concept of a more sustainable source of clean electricity by using solar panels to collect sunlight on the Moon is retired University of Houston physicist, David Criswell.