In this episode, we share the audio recording from a recent Smart Energy Decisions webinar on the State of Energy Management. In the webinar, our expert panel reviews and shares their insights on some of the key findings from our "State of Energy Management 2019" research report with input from 200+ energy, sustainability, and facilities leaders.
Expert Panel
Watch the full webinar here.
Download the State of Energy Management 2019 Report here.
Learn more about the SED Innovation Summit here
Headed to the SED innovation summit? Connect with Amber and Nate at the event
Email: aartrip@luciddg.com or nate@luciddg.com and let's connect at the show!
Questions, Comments, or if you'd like to guest star on the show please email communications@luciddg.com
In this episode, we share the audio recording from a recent Smart Energy Decisions webinar on the State of Energy Management. In the webinar, our expert panel reviews and shares their insights on some of the key findings from our "State of Energy Management 2019" research report with input from 200+ energy, sustainability, and facilities leaders.
Expert Panel
Watch the full webinar here.
Download the State of Energy Management 2019 Report here.
Learn more about the SED Innovation Summit here
Headed to the SED innovation summit? Connect with Amber and Nate at the event
Email: aartrip@luciddg.com or nate@luciddg.com and let's connect at the show!
Questions, Comments, or if you'd like to guest star on the show please email communications@luciddg.com
spk_0: 0:00
Hello, everyone, and thank you for tuning into the modern energy management podcast. We hope that you had a wonderful holiday season. We're back. And for this episode we have kind of a unique episode. We're going to be, ah, using the audio from a recent webinar that we did with smart energy decisions. This webinar is all on the recent State of Energy Management Research report that we sponsored in partnership with smart energy decisions. The purpose of this report was to get a good understanding of where the industry is, what best practices folks are using today in their energy management programs and thio identify areas for opportunity. This webinar is moderated by Deborah Channel from smart Energy Decisions. We have a great panel on this webinar Nate analysts who is the VP of energy management from Billy No es Tim Porter, who is the director of strategic accounts er Genet and Steve Gossip, who is a partner at generate capital. The Panelists will be giving us their insides and input on the results that we found in the study and the conversations Really great. I think you'll enjoy. You'll enjoy what you here. So let me kick things off by explaining a little bit about how we conducted the survey. So smart Energy Decisions conducted the survey Between the months of September and October of 2019 we were able to receive 209 survey responses from various energy sustainability and facilities professionals that we surveyed. The questions that we ask we were seeking to understand. What are the key drivers for energy management programs? What barriers to successful energy management programs, where people seeing what tools and processes are used, being used as best practices in the industry. And what are the opportunities to modernize energy management? It will be helpful for me to explain to you a little bit about who these people are and how we segmented them in our results. So first, when it comes to industry, we had a collection of higher ed commercial, industrial and manufacturing government, K through 12 and healthcare respondents, the majority being higher ed and commercial, followed by industrial and manufacturing smaller segments of government. Kate well, in health care when it comes to the size and scale of these organizations, we wanted to understand how big these energy programs were. So we asked how many sites was your organization operating where the responses were from 1 to 9 with 26% 10 to 99 with 29% 100 to 499 at 21% and 500 plus, with 24% so pretty evenly spaced out about around the size of these organizations. So it's a good sample of the different various energy programs by size. Finally, we wanted to understand where these folks considered themselves on their energy management journey. So we asked them, You know, which best describes you on your energy management journey, and we range from at the beginning to ahead of the crowd. So the majority of folks were either at the beginning, taking their first steps or picking up speed and a smaller segment. About 14% said they were well on their way and 9% said they were ahead of the crowd. You will hear is referred to the advanced segment often in this webinar. And when we say that we're referring to folks who consider themselves well on their way or head of the crowd when it comes to you, modern energy management. So that's a little bit about how we conducted the survey. Now let's go ahead and rule into some of the results that we found. We're gonna go ahead and pull out a few key findings, talk about them, and the Panelists are going to give us their insights. So let's start with how organizations collect building data. We really wanted to understand. What are people doing today toe understand what's happening in their buildings? What we found is that 55% of folks use manual processes for collecting their data. Additionally, 71% of respondents who identified themselves in the advanced category in their energy journey use real time automated data. But when you look at the Somme, only 40% are saying that they actually use real time automated utility data collection in a centralized system. So this is really interesting to us. We also see a few people on here that are still using manual meter readings. That's 32% of folks using manual meter innings. 35% of folks are exporting meter readings from their BMS and like I said before, 55% are still doing manual bill data collection. So let's go ahead and see what Nate analysts of building A last has to say about this. And after Nate, you'll hear Tim Porter's insights on this particular piece.
spk_1: 5:44
So, you know, looking at this, there's a few things that really jumped out to me. Something expected. But I think the ones a little bit self serving on being a software provider is is always glad to see that that half form or are using manual processes, not because that's the ideal way to do it. But it means there's a huge opportunity for them to harness a platform you know to Central was and really communicate data. So you had mentioned that they are automating the system. But what we find a lot of times is that the system is not really palatable for non system level users. There is a huge opportunity to put that in a format that allows him to glean but their insides to communicate that to internal stakeholders that are used to more consumer friendly products. So I think that is a great for everyone. The other big thing is there is a huge opportunity, and Tim knows this In his four productivity savings and cost savings right and automating more of those processes. And what we find with a lot of folks is they've been given this task, right? They haven't existing job, but they've been giving maybe a sustainability or energy management task. And, you know, they're high valued employees of they can refocus their time away from some of the manual pieces, allow them to really focus their time and energy on analyzing the data, formulated an action plan. Working on other easy EMS is just a huge, huge lift. Yeah, for sure. We've seen that in fact, some of the customers that we've worked with that have really successful programs that have worked well, I have focused really kind of up front on things that help with the ah rely on their investment, and that has a lot to do with productivity. So if you can have some thought, go into the system before you deploy it, or you before you launch on a project that's gonna be an expensive project for the business. Think through what some of the some of the levers are that would have some impact on the productivity of the people that are gonna be using the system or more importantly, the people that are going to be necessary to make the system valuable to people. And that kind of goes straight to the heart of more. The first key findings I think that we spoke about the beginning about barrier to the business is making you know, making a good business case for this R A. Y for these types of systems is really important. And the faster you can get to an r A Y and be able to prove that the more likely you're going to get funding for the next bite that you'd like to take of the energy management process and productivity is all about how do I get are allowed this system? How do I make it? So that isn't an efficient system. I launch it, and a lot of times a good way to shave. Are I improved? Productivity is to not, you know, not have people doing work that software could be doing. So I'm with you there. Nate, this is, um, interesting to see how much work is still being done by by people. For sure. I actually wonder things that jumped out at me just as an observation here that 32% is that right or doing manual meter readings? Still, talk about manual? I mean, you know, you could have guys manually entering invoices by at least having things sent to their desk. If you're manually reading meters, then you've got guys walking around buildings and driving trucks to get where those meters are and taking stairwells down to the basement, and that's that's seriously manual. And if you've got 1/3 of the recipient, are sort of the respondents saying they're doing that, then that definitely talks about the value of that data that they're willing t go about doing that on. But a lot of the reasons that's being done, it's because they don't know that there are ways to automate that sort of data without necessarily making a huge capital investment of installing your own meters that air, that air, some kind of smart Am I meter. So that was something jumped out at me as well. The big piece of the advanced users that were on there, too, that they are using E. M. I s in in their building collections there just to prove that those who think they're really getting a handle on it and getting value from it are using the platform. So so it proves the success.
spk_0: 10:03
Let's go ahead and move on to our next finding. So in this question, we asked, What methods is your organization using in your energy program? Select all that apply? We really wanted to understand What are people doing today and what are they not doing today? So what we found is that 82% of folks are doing some sort of monthly bill analysis, whether it's automated or manual, 66% are using benchmarking. 65% are using an energy management information system or AM I S 44% are doing measurement and verification of their savings with interval data, 26% are using fault detection and diagnostics FDD, 22% are using automated system optimization, sze or predictive. Each fact control and some interesting things that we found by diving deeper into the data is that 38% of respondents who use monthly bill analysis marked monthly bill analysis as their only method for energy management. So of that larger 82% 38% of them is That's their Onley method, and additionally, we found that 94% of respondents who considered themselves advanced in their journey used an energy management information system, so that was really insightful. So let's go ahead and hand it off to the Panelists to give us their insights.
spk_1: 11:43
This is Nate. I think that the big one for me out of the gate when I look at this is really that people are being very reactive instead of Proactiv, right when we think about true energy management and it's one thing to get data in the rear view mirror. But the ability to start getting real time interval data in a format where you can take action immediately, which will result in savings is so important. And we're seeing a lot of folks that are still in a real reactive mode here. Yeah, this definitely corroborates what we've seen quite frequently that the starting point for a lot of these M I s projects is monthly bill analysis and that may be the lowest hanging fruit. The first thing that people think of and possibly a good way for you to get that funding for the first project because it may be the least expensive or certainly require the the least investment in technology s Oh, that that that didn't surprise me. It's It's definitely common that the next layer of the onion that you peel back for these systems does involve interval data, and it does involve corroborating or matching with your monthly numbers. Consumption, cost, demand all those things. Specifics around. How that's how things have been consumed throughout the day. And that's really where a lot of the the gold can be found. That guess from an engine management energy energy manager's perspective is finding that level of information that could be turned into some small changes that you make even facility. My facility Natan, Tim, and making observation is, well, this data that you see an interesting funnel that looks like it's right out of the Mackenzie study where you see 65% in my ass deployment 44% using interval data within that and then 26% goingto fault detection diagnostics or F d. D. Where you're seeing, you know, roughly a 30% reduction in adoption as you go down to each layer of the more advanced users taking the journey further, right starting with the platform of does visualization and moving to a more real time analysis of information to automation through interval data and then finally doing two way to send agree to a control of connecting that to systems that interface with the environment that they're working in. And I would hope at least I would hope that as the market continues to evolve, that we see adoption percentages and all of those continuing to rise because ultimately is you go to that journey getting down into F D D and then into actual and basically optimization predictive analytics using artificial intelligence. We should see all of that stuff continue to grow as these platforms become more broadly adopted. Steve, do you think? And it's interesting because it's really your space to on this side. But when I look at that, do you think? Is it is it market maturity? Is it the investment and costs and being able to get access to that data like, what is the big barrier? Because clearly, you know, you would think anyone that would want more data, right? More real time data. What's the big barrier? There was 14 82 assets. It basically looks like about 10,000 business management books about adoption cycles, crossing the chasm, whatever. You know, whatever business book you wanna throw at it, it really is a bit of what Tim talked about from a reactive nature. People dip their toe into things, and as a progressively grow and comfort, they start to see the value and continue to grow in it. And we'll touch into some of this later on in the discussion on data on building business cases. But I think what it is showing seeing that curve is you start with adopting something like a M. I. S. And if it's done correctly and you do resource it properly, it will create an impact. The reinforces your core business strategies that will in turn, give you more resource is and the ability to have the attention to grow into the next thing and progressively as you go. So I just think it's the whether or not I can take a really big bite at the apple, the first time on adoption adoption within an organization because it's generally not gonna be core business concept doing energy management. I'm a little bit of a different animal because I literally invest in energy efficiency infrastructure as an investor and other people's buildings. And these are the kinds of things that it's the very first thing that I invest in because the old adage that you cannot manage what you don't measure is absolutely the case. And if I need a system like this to be ableto keeps, score, if you will, of what impact the different measures I'm inflicting, provided I can't do that without a platform like this. And then, for someone like me who's really trying to drive building performance to Dr Specifically investment, return everything else that you see in there. F d d A. I certainly interval data and analysis that allows me to do this on a on a non human basis. But automated, we do every single one of those things. We do projects because we know there's a return to it. Yeah, I think you make a good point there to it. It also correlates to the user red. So when you start looking through these, there's there's definitely a different set of users, especially when you get into more of the enterprise accounts of you know who is, uh, What's the use case right that they're using it for So So I think we're starting to see some maturity where some of the core users on the facility cider moving out of some of the localized system level tools right and starting to use more of a collaborative tool that ridge across multiple stakeholders. So that makes sense. That's a That's a great point, Nate. And that's the next thing that we really see from an investment perspective and looking at 2020 and forward is This is gonna be the time that the Master Sisters innovation and getting outside of tactical two grand strategic and using the ability to take five G is a platform, for example, on all the other kind of phrases of people throwing I ot or democratization of data. All these different concepts at the end of the day can I find out what energy is happening and it's the smallest systems possible. It can actually influence that, and all the things we're talking about here are the building blocks, the Legos of being able to do just that and how I reinforce a core business strategy around. This is why we think the next 10 years is going to be a massive renaissance in this from a data perspective,
spk_0: 18:08
the next question that we asked in the survey that we wanted to highlight here is what are the important factors to success? And in this particular question, we said Select all that imply what are all the factors to success that you work concerned about? So what we found was 67% said that getting data streams organized and brought into inaccessible location or database ah was oven important factors to success. 66% said utility incentives to offset costs was important, 61% said having corporate level energy savings or carbon reduction goals to drive the investment of a solution. 52% said embedding the use of analytics into operational practices and having consistency with those analytics. 41% said the integration of an energy management system with the maintenance, management and work orders, and 30% said working with the I T department early. But when we asked them what was the single most important factor, the one that came in third which is having a corporate energy level savings or carbon reduction goal to Dr e my ass. Investment rose to the top as the single most important factor, with 67% of total respondents saying that it was the most important. So we found that really interesting. Let's go ahead and hands went off to the panel to get their thoughts.
spk_1: 19:42
Yeah, this one was good to see how this fell out. Being a data guy for sure, right? Confirms again. It's really all about the data, and it kind of is a two way street, right? That you if you have the data, but you don't have a good way to organize it and consume it, and it doesn't really help many people. But if you have a great system for organizing and consuming it and having great analysts ready to look at it, but you can't get to the data or it takes months or teams of people to get you the data, that doesn't really help people a lot easier either. So it's not surprising. I guess that the important successfactors were topped by is all about the data if I were to summarize it that way, but it is interesting that it took asking the question a different way to have what people would consider to be the thing that they wanted to win on most. They had to. I had to do most to win the game. And that is, you know, having corporate goals, um, be met for success to be to be achieved. So I think that maybe it's a little bit like the most important thing for a football coaches to win the game right. But he knows that the most important thing for you to win that game, you have really good practices and you work super hard to get there, and so that is a little bit of what I interpreted some of these results to see. That practice is absolutely required. Data is absolutely required, but again, that all needs to lead to achieving the corporate goals right. All needs to lead to a win in the game, so I think that's a good analogy or not. But that's kind of what came to mind when I saw this. This stacking of the responses, yeah, I think the big thing, though, is and this goes back to a lot of our customers, even prospects that we talked to. They know what needs to be done, but getting them to prioritize getting that data organized or even who's doing it right and we talk about more of an automated mission is is really a big hurdle in many cases. Just getting that and nurture that moment. Um, I think the other piece that I don't know if I would say it's alarming, but frustrating sometimes is, you know, those that still are looking at efficiency as the endgame, right? I'm going to do one task. It's going to deliver X y Z results, and it's over when Really this mind shit mind shift, if you will, is really continuous optimization right and the ability to glean insights and communicate those results. But it's never ending right. It's just not one efficiency project beginning and we're done. And so when I see the utility incentives piece offset the costs being the corps, I still feel like is a group we have a lot of education to do, which which I'm glad we're having a lot of these depths of forms. I'd like to 0.1 more thing out as you guys were pointing at that and I was very entertaining by the slide is a great sig way to the one that follows. But in looking at the if, I only get to choose one thing, the thing that's third becomes number one, which is around corporate goals, which I find that entertaining because it's the end of the day. It's ah, if I don't have the ability to get resourced, I don't have the ability to build time to this. And if my compensation structure isn't tied to delivering on this, it's gonna be really hard for me to ever get anywhere with this, which is what you would expect that also foreshadows the well, howto. I make sure that doing these things that perhaps if I'm in the space or managing energy, how do I make sure this aligns to a corporate goal, right? It's It's the flip side of it. How do I make sure that I've articulated that spending time on this reinforces what we're trying to do is a business, and then, as you tied to that, the next place is is how do I make that happen? It's generally gonna end up being financial in some way, shape or form, but it's interesting to the the concept of Is this a one time thing, or is this a continuous change? A little bit like exercise you can. You can choose to have one healthy meal, but that's probably not going to be if you could choose to work out one time. But when you're really trying to run this against the corporate goal, it is a continuous process, and it is a long term process because letting the engineer and me come out a little bit. All systems tend to entropy, right? I can. I can tune up everything to its absolute best. But if I leave it to its own devices on, I introduced people, which are the greatest source of entropy that you've ever had with the building. They're eventually going to have more problems. And so you have to create a system that allows you thio, watch what it's doing on a long term basis and continue to take very activist approaches to optimizing the performance of your buildings, making sense. By the way, I'm trying back into the It definitely makes sense. I think you hit on a great point there, which is really you know, you can have all the data in the world. But if you can't tie that d'oh ah, corporate goal That is a shared goal on again with a group of stakeholders that you communicate to an A in a financial impact sense or a sense that resonates to even a qualitative goal. You know, it's it's not helpful just to have a big set of data. So that part is critical for for M I s a swell. Yeah, I actually love the entropy, it meal planning example that you that you gave I think I'm a perfect example of poor meal planning, especially this time of year. But, you know, it's like it's, uh it doesn't make any sense to you get on a diet and try to lose a lot of weight and you're successful at that and then just stop that. I think that's to the same point. This is an ongoing thing that is difficult for people to consider that when they're getting their first set of projects launched an under way and if if it's viewed as a long term injury tive continual part of the business than the way that you go about re sourcing and as you mentioned Steve is, is really key and tying something that's not going to be just a 30 day diet back to something that doesn't benefit the business in multiple ways outside of just utility cost savings or whatever is really gonna be critical for that to continue to be the case
spk_0: 26:08
next, we really wanted to understand what barriers people were experiencing in having a successful energy management system implementation. Um, so when we survey the folks, we found that 22% find difficulty and making a business case to management to allocate funds for an energy management system. 19% experience lack of staff time to review the dashboards and reports, and to investigate and implement findings. 18% experience, lack of existing metering in place or the cost of adding meters. 2012% said changes in integrating data from various sources into the M s was a barrier to them. 11% Experience Challenge Challenge is getting operations staff to buy in and use the tool, and 7% had data quality problems or data gaps. So let's hand this one off to the panel and see what they have to say.
spk_1: 27:15
And I think this one I know both Tim and see, we're gonna have some interesting insights here, but going top to bottom, you know, I love the stack ranking here because it makes sense. And and we we hear it all the time from our customers. When it comes to the difficulty in making the business case, I think that continues to improve, right? I mean, we've seen a lot of studies come out recently. In fact, the deal we with better building study where I think they had a little over 20 buildings over the last six years. They've been tracking and heavily proven know the payback oven M s system, right? With savings in your one, you know, upwards of 4% and even continuing into your five upwards of 19. Plus, you know, we even have a free calculator. Attn. Lucid connects slash r a y. Where you go help create that business case. That's a free tool that people can use. But I think that continues to improve. But I think the big thing is really taking it off a strict r o i and thinking about it in our ally in terms of productivity savings because they kind of blend together in here right of not having time, but its productivity savings is huge, and it's one that doesn't always get factored in when they're looking at a strict. Maybe it's a R y on E c M later ploy, but but on the timepiece, I think you also have so many more options now from the service's perspective. And that's when I know Steve can talk to and outsourcing some of those pieces as well. And there's always maybe a starting point. But I I think the great thing is, is most of these could be eliminated with the investment right of some automation tools and analytics. So there's there's some good options today that could help immediately. I think that level of enthusiasm we all have for this slide trying not to jump on top of each other and looking at this. But this was This was the slide that I found most interesting when I looked at the study results and I'm not surprised by the order it came in. But if I start to take them from top to bottom first, the difficulty in making the business case to get re sourcing is fundamentally investing in M. I s is about creating the method to grade the homework or grade the test, if you will. And it is fundamental to being able to actually make that business case. Because when you go in tow, are you re sourcing this? This has to be a part of a discussion around doing something deeper that's gonna have more impact than just measuring. And, of course, the first thing that you're gonna be talking about is low cost and no cost measures frequently behavior modification, schedule modification, things like that to just squeeze the air out of the system without investing heavily in infrastructure. But you really need to be able to have the ability to demonstrate that you did it in. And that's where, fundamentally that first point of building the business case, you've got to build a have some level of conviction around being able to do that and that that leads into the next one, which is talking about Well, if I've done something, do I have the time to actually look at the data that's coming out of me frequently? Over the years, I've heard a lot of complaints from people saying My building automation system already screams at me, 1000 alarms that I have absolutely no capacity to deal with, or maybe even context to understand. And that, really is about being able to work with the right people in what you deploy, to be ableto understand contextually what is coming out of my building and what is the most important thing for me to look at and, if properly implemented, that dashboard ing in the reporting, particularly in a near real time basis, should be helping guide ideally, what you're doing with the building. So having the right partners and the right approach from the beginning can help avoid the noise problem, the stuff that happens below that around investing in infrastructure, NATO, that's that becomes the thing of I need to build from success. I would I would suggest, if you're out there trying to tie back to a corporate goal and looking at this, make sure you, uh, you pick on something that you can win, right? If you're going to start your first boxing match, go for the smallest and skinniest opponent that you can possibly find right, And in looking at this, I want you to go try to put in an E m I s. And then go squeeze the air out by going after simpler things like time schedules and operating an occupancy, to be able to do something and show the win with the platform and that in turn or allow you to continue to be able to grow and get re sources and dollars available to grow into the system. Ultimately, at the very bottom of this data is the other big chasm after you've started to build infrastructure, which is how do we get the people who operate the buildings, particularly if I'm on enterprise Energy manager? How do we get the operations team on, to some extent, the i t team to work with me? Everybody likes a winner. That's the answer I generally give. People start building on success, measuring success, showing that this aligns to corporate goal around, making the business more energy efficient or resource efficient and more carbon responsible. And you'll be amazed about how many people want to get on the team for the big win, if you will. So I'll stop. I could talk about this slide for probably two hours. I feel like we're all there, but you hit, You hit the mark big time there, Steve, too, because you know when you think about it, I guess I go back to the terrible analogy. Rome wasn't built in a day, but people do like wins, right? And and we see in many cases they start small. But then it's so much easier for them when you have the scorecard to go get additional investment from those winds, right? And in 3456 years down the road, you know, they've built really an impressive program on, and it's a critical piece as we talk about people kind of moving their way into the C suite or in some of these energy and sustainability roles. So that is definitely a good advice that all build actually on what you just said there, Nate, which is I'm in an unusual situation and that I have the checkbook and I invest in the infrastructure. I generally am investing in someone else's building and investing in all the infrastructure, and I'm recovering my investment from the economic benefit of creating some sort of efficiency savings. So I made invest in replacing someone else's chillers, and they're lighting in their building automation with my checkbook in their building or they've outsourced their energy infrastructure. And the very first thing that I put in is the E. M. I s platform to be able to measure the impact of what I'm doing because it's fundamental to the revenue I'm creating is being able to make sure I measure it. And as someone that actually makes a living on investing in these projects, I can tell you it's fundamental. It's it's their ground rules of being able to say that I did save 10 units of this or 100 units of why. And here's where I made an implementation. Here's what it did and here's the value long term and then in a long term basis, ensuring that, you know I can tune of a building. But if I walk away from it and I don't ever continue to watch it, I can promise you will go away. And I have reams of data from prior experiences that are not positive. That will tell you if you don't watch it, you don't watch it in near real time basis. It's ah, it's not gonna perform the way I wanted to Yeah, I guess that's that's the simple fact that your business exists and can be successful proves no matter how many success stories you might share, right, that proves that the savings are there. And if there's anybody to ask about what the important steps are to see those savings, it would probably be good to ask someone who only makes money when the savings were found, right? So your insight is, uh, I think is encouraging. Should be encouraging everybody who's trying to figure out how to justify this, because clearly in most cases, there should be a way to justify it. I think the thing that this ended up looking like to me and I stared at it was almost a little bit of a road map for people who are trying to do the first thing in making the business case because it tells you what are the things that are problematic in making that business case. Let me take a look at my data quality. Is there something I can identify as a data gap right at the beginning, as I'm trying to make my business case, are there going to be challenges getting my operations staff to buy N Is there gonna be trouble with integrating all these different systems into the C M I m e m I s system that I want? So this sort of gives you a little bit of a playbook to say, Well, these are the things you can reverse engineer a little bit into coming up with a business plan. To understand how, the way, how way mitigate all those challenges that air likely gonna be run in to find out which ones were the biggest ones for me and help that map me towards that smallest skinniest guy that I want to go fight first as I'm putting my justification together. Actually, one story that came to mind as they looked at the second to the last one. That challenge is getting operations staff to buy in. We had a conversation with a customer a couple months back and they said, You know, that was really a big problem for us. We couldn't get this great system that we've invested in off the ground because we couldn't get the facilities managers buying to do the work that was needed. And we asked him what that work Waas and they said. Well, we sent him a spreadsheet to pale out every month, and all I gotta do is go back and look at, you know, their electric bills, and we can't even tell him on what page to look to find out what their consumption is and what their peak demand was for that month. And I just gotta put it in the spreadsheet. And if you're trying to do that when you've got 500 facilities across the country, the likelihood that the guy that also has to make sure you know everything else about the building is running. It's probably not gonna be super bought in having to fill out a spreadsheet. So those those types of challenges often are solved by making it any easier job for them right? The easier you make their stat the staff's job on you. Couple that with the fact that it's a good win for them to be a part of, makes that problem a lot easier to overcome.
spk_0: 37:12
To wrap up our presentation part of the Webinar, we wanted Thio identify some areas for opportunity for our listeners. We found three so wanted to adopt automation and reduce manual data collection two is to implement tools and technology like an energy management information system. And three is to increase the use of real time data analysis to maximize efficiency. So I'm gonna pass it off Thio the Panelists to give us their predictions of four areas of opportunity as we go into 2020.
spk_1: 37:47
I know I have a lot of comments here too, but open it up, Thio, Tim and Stephen think of something out of the gate and then I could jump in. I think these were probably the primary areas of opportunity that that I think exist. They're sort of rolled up and higher level, but, um, the fact that a lot of folks have at least dabbled, innit? In the whole concept of implementing some kind of energy management program and and have maybe not adopted automation or only put their toe in the water as some of the initial results showed, they only put their toe in the water for automation and maybe haven't really liked the flavor of it, I think is is ah good, maybe indication that we're moving beyond the first phase of the industry, thinking that this is something that that's gonna be a challenge of them to do so. I think that people's experiences and the ones that do it successfully being talked about and identified, and something that you can compare yourselves to will help. We'll help people who are trying to do it maybe a little bit better than I did the first time. Or finally maybe have seen a couple of people try to climb the wall whether they're successful or not, Feel like it's time for them to take their stab at doing the things that are required to make an energy management program actually work on DDE, have some successes that they can try toe emulate, you know, mimic. I jump into what you guys were talking about there and say that at risk of saying, if you don't restrict me just a 2020 peace, it's always hard. Say what? What other things may distract. But if you look at, you know, a midterm near term trend, these things are pretty rolled up. But the middle one around adopting tools and technologies. There's things that are happening where there is a proliferation of information on a real time in near real time basis that even without the building operator or 19 department without even their knowledge or consent. Maybe there's intelligent devices coming in all over the place in their buildings, and that's what's going to be so interesting to folks like me. Is that how much is actually already there? What do you do to do? Normalization and tow? Ideally, once I've normalized that data, can I then use context and be able to do things that change, how building performs, how resilient the building is, et cetera, and we're dipping our toe into that descend? Agree? In 2020 I think by 2025 we're going to be seeing a fairly dramatic adoption of two sides, one being one spot. Urban areas are awash in five G on A lot of the things about back hauling data have changed. Once we've started introducing analytics at the edge because of the way those networks are gonna be rolled out. A lot of the things we're talking about that maybe somebody said, I don't I don't know how I'm going to implement this. It's gonna be an exciting time to see how many things are available. But if you don't have somebody to help me with the context and to be able to do something with this, probably gonna have a harder time and you're gonna be behind the curve. So it's a good time right now to be in the market, to be active in trying to understand it, to ride the wave, as opposed to get crushed by it to some degree, because it is absolutely coming. As a result of the combination. Of course, an engineering world. We had to call it a three letter acronym, but I ot and then I ot combined with five G and their general itics. It's it's just really an interesting time to be in the smart building space. Steve, Wouldn't you also say it's It's really you mentioned modern technology, right? There's so many devices that are are providing data sets out there, but it isn't a factor to really cost rate. This is becoming more affordable for a lot of folks to take that first step in their journey and get access to, you know, data that they may be otherwise wouldn't have had a capital budget to invest in right. You're exactly right. It's even take it a step further. It's the I didn't even know this was their factor right where you start trying to crawl things and find Wait, that thing's viewing data at me. I didn't even know that I had an intelligent device out there. I wonder who else knows. This state is coming off of my building. There's the the department gets involved, right? But yes, it's changing. It's changing a lot, and that's somebody that works in. You know, you talk about enterprise users, and obviously I I can't start naming names and different people we work with. But we're seeing a proliferation of this particular issue on on when you have very large consumers of space across a lot of different geographic distribution that people in the facilities, management and energy management space air being surprised both positively and negatively about what's in their buildings because it's just it's moving faster than people can keep inventory totally agree. And I think one of the things that Tim touched on two when you think about sharing success stories is I think about a little bit like benchmarking right. We're finally to a place where there are so many quote unquote. Even in this study, advanced users showing success that it really is. Now people have a benchmark to go improve what they're doing right. It's pushing them to be better because the status quo just was wasn't getting there. So if they benchmark themselves against others in a similar roller capacity, you know there's a good road map for them to to show success and do something differently. I know we just did a podcast on the A lot of these predictions, if you will, and a couple others that will throw out there that I think you know are aligned with this topic is really sustainability in the C suite, right? We're finally seeing sustainability and energy managers with seat of the table and the things that they're doing with energy management are correlating to all these other sets of data that are really making an impact beyond just energy efficiency on. So I think we're going to continue to see that lift. In fact, you know, we've heard a lot of people making the prediction that those heads of sustainability are going to start finding themselves even and CEO rules to these companies with a lot of the strategic nature that is moving forward. Another one that that we see is just budgets growing right? We're seeing now that sass is not a scary for a lot of people were seeing data budget software budgets really grow to the to the tune of, like three x what they were even at a couple of years ago. So that's good news for everyone having better access to these tools. And then, Steve, this might hit up on you. But one of the big ones were seeing a lot of steak in the grounds for net zero goals with actual milestones and road maps to him. So we're seeing a lot of our big corporate customers really shift to, you know, renewable generation and true net zero goals for the organizations. So I think that is a huge push for automating a lot of these things. And then you start asking the question, How much do I need to buy it? I'm buying offsets. How much renewable power do I need to consume et cetera and again going back to the idea? Well, if I don't measure my footprint and I don't really understand it from a both a time based and an aggregate based How do I not only create a solution for that and so again reinforces the data data data like Marcia, Marcia, Marcia. But, you know, stuff that Tim that you're doing is well or around trying to take. You know, this for someone like me who's always been a technologist, this dinosaur approach to paper bills from a utility company and trying to provide context to that data, you know, the revolution of getting access to this information and doing it outside the need of a utility to catch up and be a leading thought. There are thought leader in providing that. I'm gonna go ahead and make the big reveal. If you're relying on the utilities to be the first mover to be able to solve this problem for you, you're gonna be waiting a really, really long time. So you gotta find a way to do it without so context. Don't hold your breath. That's hilarious. Makes sense. Oh, for sure it's a wake up call for everybody.
spk_0: 46:28
Finally, we opened it up to some questions to the audience. So go ahead and tune in as Deborah Fields questions from the audience and mate Tim and Steve Answer those questions. Now, this has been great conversation, great insights
spk_1: 46:44
that really appreciate it.
spk_0: 46:45
I want to get some time in for
spk_1: 46:47
some questions because they've been coming in. They're
spk_0: 46:50
still times. Just admit s O the Taiko and your consul. If you've got questions and if we don't get
spk_1: 46:56
to live, will follow up with you afterwards. So
spk_0: 46:59
let's roll right in the first question. My company is just getting
spk_1: 47:03
started in our energy journey. What
spk_0: 47:05
is the best and fastest
spk_1: 47:07
way that I can catch up to the advanced group? Tim, why don't you take that one? Yeah, I think Steve had a lot of insight on how it is that you try to find that smallest skinny is Boxer to go into the ring with to begin with. And I think that's a great analogy. There are so many good examples now success stories now that if I were trying to do that myself, I would probably try to find some relevant examples that were successful in my space that I could start using as the basis forgetting the executive team, the sponsorship contingent excited about about sponsoring what I would be proposing. And it starts with I think doing some research and looking for some kind of awesome, rosy outlooks that someone else can provide you. We have one example of, uh, No one customer was a hospital business medical business. They have 100 plus hospitals around the country, and they were very prescriptive about how they went about it and definitely picked small chunks to begin with in the end, after two or three years worth of this progression through this, this energy management program that they put in place and got approval for end up saving, like for 1/2 $1,000,000 a year in energy costs across these hospitals. And that was enough. We ask them how that quantified I know spends at hospitals are so large. Sometimes it's hard to measure how that stacks up to other people's businesses. But they said that that was the equivalent of powering five hospitals for free each year. And that's a pretty easy thing for an executive, even one who doesn't have money sustainability notions in their mind. Thio stand up and listen to like Holy smokes. How about if I do a program that's gonna have you not have to pay an electric bill for five of your hospitals. That's that's an easy way to start putting a plan together that people might be interested in, in and sponsoring, Um, and and along the way, they, you know, building a team that will be helpful in getting concensus. That would include getting some of the folks that would be critical data people I ke people, folks that could could be sold on this being a feather in their cap. It was it was a good way to get started without really having Thio without having to bite off a steep said through the whole apple at one time. So I think that's a really good way to find a good baby step. And even before you define that baby step, find some good success cases, some good examples to share with your executive team to get them to see this is actually something. If they're doing it, then probably I should be worried about it as well. Okay, great.
spk_0: 49:52
Thanks for that. Let's go right into our next question. Nate, I'm going to direct this one towards you. It's got a little attitude to it. This is all great, but I'm an energy manager, and I'm a little concerned that technology
spk_1: 50:05
will replace my job. Do you
spk_0: 50:07
see that happening?
spk_1: 50:11
That's a great question. I think in many in many industries is you started thinking about a A and and other things. People are getting concerned, But you know, I don't think so in this space. And and I'll tell you why you know, we can do some amazing things with analytics, but it still takes somebody that you know, truly knows. That facility truly knows. The culture knows the executive team all the dynamics on that's always gonna be that human interaction piece. And what we've really seen is especially when it comes to a I. It's not that it's getting so smart that it's replacing. You know, the unique high, you know, little task that that these sustainable energy managers were doing. But it really is customizing the experience. We see a I a little bit differently in that it's going to take all of this metadata that you have available in these facilities, and you're gonna be able to really customize wth e insights, the views, how you communicate that internally based on your specific portfolio type. So that's the piece that I think is is really exciting. It's not a replacement of a skill set. It's just empowering them in a customized way. That's very purpose built in specific. So it's not generically benchmarking and others. It's really in collaboration with specific KP eyes specific goals on that unique organization. So I think they're fine. But But I would also say, when you look at that, those that don't jump on the band wagon to embrace modern technology and to really start interacting with the C suite in getting them to see the value of whether it's a project or an initiative that you're doing are going to be left behind. And I think that those are the folks that are gonna have, ah, challenging time keeping their job. Ah, not not being automated out of it. Yeah, let me jump on to what you just said there. NATO didn't just expand on it briefly. Is that you don't want to have somebody asking you a question you can't answer and then and then asking why you don't know the answer to it. It's not gonna be a good situation, you know, it starts with people with Cee Lo will get yelled at by a 16 year old Swedish girl. It's gonna get a lot worse when they start trying. Tow askyou context around that from a defensive perspective. So it's not just a haze, everybody else ahead of me. It's when people internally started asking questions that you need to have the answer to start looking at what it's gonna take to be able to get those answers because they are coming.
spk_0: 52:45
Well, that's the end of the webinar. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of modern energy management. If you want to learn more about this research report, if you want to find a link to the webinar, Um, or if you wanna download slides, you can access those links. In the description of this podcast, I'll be sure to include them down there. I want to say a big thank you to the folks that smart energy decisions for letting us use this recording for the podcast. If you would like to learn more about smart energy decisions, I've also included a link in the description of this podcast. We will be attending the Smart Energy Decisions Innovation Summit coming up this spring If you will also be attending, please reach out to either Nate or myself. Um, you can find us on lengthen or you can connect with us directly. I'll include our emails in the description If you have any questions for us or if you would like Thio. Uh, come on our podcast and share your story of modern energy management. Please email us at communications at lucid d g dot com. We would love to have you on the show. Also remember that you can tune in to the modern energy management podcast wherever you get your podcasts. You can even ask Alexa or Google Home play the modern energy management podcast, and they will do that for you. If you like what you hear, Please leave us a review in the Apple Podcast store or send us a no at communications at lucid d g dot com. We'd love to hear from you as always, thank you for tuning in. We will be back next week with more great stories about modern energy management. Thanks again