Energy Management and Information System Software Technology Assessment: Considerations for Evaluating Baselining and Savings Estimation Functionality

The energy tracking function of energy management and information system  (EMIS) software has the potential benefit of assessing technologies, such as building controls and the functionality of the EMIS software technology themselves (i.e. customer engagement), that produce operational and behavioral savings at the building level.  However, technology evaluators lack performance criteria by which they might gauge the accuracy and reliability of using the energy tracking function of EMIS software for savings estimation.

PG&E commissioned this project to conduct a technology assessment to evaluate the baseline modeling functionality of a specific class of EMIS software that offer an energy tracking function based on utility-provided interval meter data. This class of EMIS software relies on interval meter and other types of data to produce usable information and guidance for building owners, managers, operators and users interested in managing their energy consumption, whether for the purpose of cost management or to support environmental sustainability initiatives. 

The project will produce an evaluation methodology and suggest performance metrics and software test protocols by which utilities, their regulators or third party reviewers might evaluate the performance of EMIS software for baseline creation and savings estimation.   

This report outlines the need in the industry for a software testing protocol and describes the considerations that are important for the development of the performance criteria and test protocols. PG&E is tackling some of these research questions, as discussed in the section “Baselining Project Overview”, and a report on testing open source modeling methods is forthcoming (Price 2013).

This report also discusses how testing baseline functionality of EMIS software tools is a stepping stone to using EMIS software functionality in whole building program approaches and describes additional considerations for using EMIS software for savings estimation.

*Note: this final report is a revision of the interim report published in December 2012.

An independent technical review conducted by SAM Associates of this report and of the related Model Analysis and Test Protocol Reports (ET12PGE5312) is also published below ("ET12PGE1311_ET12PGE5312_TechnicalReview").