As energy prices increase, public and private sector building owners are looking harder for solutions to manage and reduce energy use. Cost-effective utility bill management and energy auditing tools accessed through the internet are the next step from traditional spreadsheet and hardcopy methods. When BOSS Online, an energy management service provider needed to make their systems available 24/7, they turned to a solid back-end infrastructure made possible by Dell PowerEdge Servers with Intel® Xeon™ processors.

Challenge:

For many years, companies and governments concerned about high energy costs have hired specialist energy auditors to identify and analyze energy conservation opportunities. A proper energy audit requires complex analysis of factors like mechanical equipment details, lighting technologies, occupancy, space usage, local weather, building codes, and system interactions. At the end of an audit, the client would receive a paper report, but the quality, level of detail, and methodologies used would vary widely from one auditor to the next. Further, changes in energy markets and building usage would often render energy audits obsolete before the recommendations could be implemented.

Until recently there has been no audit standard, no way for an owner to compare his or her buildings to other similar buildings in the same sector, and no way to ensure that audit information remains current and actionable. BOSS Online was founded as a standard, dynamic system to help facility owners identify energy saving opportunities, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, renew building infrastructure, and live up to environmental goals. Since its creation more than seven years ago, the BOSS Online system of auditing has been used in more than 1000 buildings, including hospitals, office buildings, colleges, schools, high-rise apartments, condominiums, factories, arenas, swimming pools, penitentiaries, and police stations.

In the past, consultants worked from ad-hoc collections of spreadsheets and word processor templates to generate hard-copy energy audit reports for their clients. One experienced energy auditing firm, Efficiency Engineering Inc., needed to translate their own static forms, calculation methods, and reports into a dynamic analysis and reporting tool that could change and adapt to changing client and energy market realities. Building owners needed real-time facility data to make more effective decisions. BOSS Online was created to meet these market needs.

With deregulation in the energy sector, the investment scenarios outlined in energy audit reports often changed rapidly as the price of energy changed. This shortened the shelf life of these reports, turning them into a snapshot of building systems and operations rather than a tool for managing energy usage and conservation projects.

“Commodity prices completely change the financial picture for these investment opportunities,” says Mike Thomas, President of BOSS Online. “We needed a more dynamic and sophisticated tool to manage the information that came out of our audits.”

While Thomas knew computers were good at storing and managing information, Efficiency Engineering was using desktop computers and a suite of different software tools to generate their reports and manage the data volume (more than 30,000 pieces of information are needed to produce an energy audit for a typical 100,000 square foot building). None of the files were linked, and aggregating information across building sectors and geographic zones was next to impossible. They worried about the stability of the system as they expanded the type of solution they wanted to provide.

Over time, Thomas and IT manager Calvin Irwin saw an opportunity to develop BOSS Online into a robust process and make it available to clients over the Internet. The decision to move from an internal tool to a service that clients would be accessing over the Internet cemented the need for a solid server based environment that could handle the increased access and processing requirements of customers logging into the system from outside the company.

“With the planned roll out of BOSS Online to the public, we needed a robust server environment that could run 24/7 and had the capacity to meet the increased public demand. Clients needed faster returns on their queries, and we needed to make sure the system was always available,” says Irwin, who oversaw development of the online tool, in addition to his role managing BOSS Online’s internal IT infrastructure.

BOSS Online moved from a Linux system running on desktop computers to the Dell PowerEdge Servers powered by Intel ® Xeon ™ technology, running on a Windows operating system. This provided the company with the stability they needed to move from a data repository of energy audit forms and templates to a dynamic database tool that responds instantly to new market realities and to continuous client interaction

Key Advantages:

“Our old system was too slow and the demand on the machines was too high,” says Irwin, noting they were limited by the kinds of reports and comparisons they could generate for a client. “With the centralized repository of data, we can create more useful comparisons to similar buildings, or contrast the results within their own organizations. Our system runs 24/7 and I know clients can access the information they need, anytime and from anywhere.”

The transition from desktop to a server-based system also increased internal efficiency and reduced duplication of effort. Since everyone works from the same dataset, there is less confusion.

“There are a lot of players involved in an energy audit, each one providing a specific skill set. Moving to a centralize database and an online tool allows us to tie their work together seamlessly, even if some of them are in another part of the country,” says Thomas. “We can support our clients much better now.”

Instant Access to Dynamic Information

In a province like Ontario where gas prices are fluctuating quarterly, and hydro prices are changing with each change of government, the need to dynamically change gas, hydro and oil prices is essential. “We can now go in quickly and change the commodity rates or contract prices for energy such as hydro or gas and it will ripple through their reports in real time. Clients can instantly see the change in the investment opportunity and the related financial payback,” Thomas says.

Without the speed and stability of the servers running Intel Xeon technology, the transition from static to dynamic reporting and the ability to support a growing client base with a reliable reporting engine would have been impossible.

In addition to showing the ROI of conservation projects, BOSS Online provides clients with a tool to aggregate projects among facilities, to achieve bulk purchasing discounts. Thomas says that in the past, companies would typically look at individual buildings in isolation, but with BOSS Online running in a server environment, they can roll up the retrofit requirements and buy in bulk to support all their buildings, not just single structures. In fact, BOSS Online allows buildings owners to consolidate their equipment needs within buying groups for even greater savings.

A key component of BOSS Online is a billing management system that will help clients track energy consumption and costs against weather and building use. While many companies use their accounting department to manage utility bills, they usually find that the energy bills are treated as a monthly “unavoidable” cost, rather than a place to find operational savings. Without detailed building-specific information and utility market intelligence, companies can’t see savings opportunities, and can’t even spot basic billing errors.

Helping Meet Kyoto Targets

With benchmarks for a reduction in greenhouse emissions established by the Kyoto Protocol, many companies and governments are struggling with how to meet their commitments for energy reduction. Municipalities including Ottawa, Sudbury, and the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association (AUMA) are using BOSS Online to more effectively manage energy usage in their facilities with limited internal resources.

“One of the key ways to achieve a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is through energy efficiencies,” says Robert Kerr, Director of ICLEI Canada, an international association of 480 local governments with the focus on environment and sustainability. ICLEI has been a BOSS Online client since its inception. “For many municipalities, the information they need is not available and they don’t know how to audit their facilities. We now have a tool and a methodology to deliver energy audits more efficiently, and then to track the results of their conservation efforts”

Today, BOSS Online and ICLEI help manage the energy use of more than 25 million square feet of municipal facilities. Sudbury and Ottawa are approaching 20 per cent savings on their energy bills, which translates into multi-million dollar budget savings thanks to utility bill management and energy auditing through BOSS Online. These energy savings have a real impact on greenhouse gas emissions, says Kerr. “Greenhouse gases are tied directly to energy use. A 20 per cent energy savings results in a 20 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.”

The system can also help building owners compare their own stats against similar buildings. “Owners want to know how their buildings compare to others in the local area or in the same building sector. Our system gives them that information,” says Thomas.

Taking Advantage of Government Funding

Thomas also notes that there is government funding available to building owners seeking to conserve energy, but the application process is often so complex that few companies take advantage of it. With BOSS Online, the required information can be organized easily and the output can be quickly generated and tailored to the application requirements.

Powerful Tools Available 24/7

An added internal benefit to making BOSS Online an internet-based application has been the ability to troubleshoot client questions or provide training over the Internet. With wireless notebooks such as those using Intel® Centrino™ Mobile Technology, clients are accessing information from more places than ever before. That means BOSS Online needed the capability to provide instant online support of their clients.

“I use wireless daily,” says Irwin, who is able to trouble-shoot network questions “right then and there”. With wireless and the ability to access the network remotely, the need is reduced for Irwin to physically travel to client sites or even into the BOSS Online office.

Kerr recently hosted a training session in Calgary for the AUMA. With a wireless hotspot in the hotel, Kerr was able to conduct the training in real time, wirelessly from the conference room. Alberta is expanding its use of wireless and has plans to establish a SuperNet to enhance access to the Internet. More and more clients are asking for access in more places and over more devices including notebooks, PDAs, and smartphones, says Kerr.

BOSS Online trainers can “shadow” their clients and help them learn the system, input data or identify problems. Kerr says this virtual training tool has helped numerous municipalities to get up to speed on the system quickly, and allows them to help out whenever people get stuck.

“We can see everything people are doing, move their mouse, input information and see instantly what each other are doing,” says Thomas. “It’s a very powerful tool.”

Self Service Energy Audits

With many municipalities and businesses trying hard to control budgets and reduce costs, BOSS Online allows clients to conduct portions of their energy audits independently. Thomas estimates this can cut the cost of an energy audit by 15 to 20 per cent. “Why hire senior engineers to count light bulbs,” adds Kerr. “Since lighting is a large part of most energy conservation programs, we can teach a client how to inventory their lighting which saves them time and money.”

Dell servers powered by Intel Xeon processors provide BOSS Online with the speed and stability it needs to allow clients independent access to their databases over the Internet. “We can now make information more useful and available to our customers. Clients can pull reports, and instantly see how changes in their operations can have an immediate result on energy usage. Without this technology, our clients would not have access to the information they need to make good decisions. We are helping our clients break through that information barrier, take action, and realize their opportunities sooner” says Thomas.

More Efficient Data Storage

While BOSS Online is a more sophisticated tool today, Irwin estimates their data storage needs have dropped with the development of their online tool. He explained that there was a lot of duplication of data in the past and with the previous tools, file corruption was not uncommon and they would occasionally lose information. “Moving to a SQL server running Windows 2000 provided increased stability,” said Irwin, noting they are running their databases on a Dell PowerEdge 4600 with Intel Xeon processor 24/7 and have noticed a significant improvement in both speed and stability.

Reproduced with permission from the Intel corporate website.