The management of an organization’s environmental impact has become a natural part of doing business. In response to the demand for improved energy efficiency and reduced waste among businesses, Energy Ottawa has answered the call with services designed to measure and optimize a facility’s usage.
“In the whole culture of energy and resource efficiency, if you can’t measure it, it’s hard to save it,” explains Glenn Mooney, Manager of Energy Services at Energy Ottawa.
Among the services Energy Ottawa offers is the EnergyFlow Monitor, which tracks a building’s energy and water use in real-time, providing valuable data to identify inefficiencies or adjust settings based on occupancy patterns. It was developed by USbased Noveda Technologies, with Energy Ottawa as the exclusive Canadian distributor.
The EnergyFlow Monitor service is twofold. First, Energy Ottawa ensures all the necessary hardware is in place. They deploy energy engineers to either access a facility’s pre-existing metering or to install new ones – whether to track water, electricity or natural gas consumption. These are then connected to a gateway, which sends this data to the cloud. The second component of the system is the EnergyFlow Monitor software. It presents a facility’s data in a real-time, easy-to-navigate dashboard that building managers or owners can access and customize.
The system displays usage data and estimated costs. It also offers comparison features, so organizations can compare themselves to corporate benchmarks. The system is ideal for reporting on the Ministry of Energy’s recently introduced Energy and Water Reporting and Benchmarking initiative.
“It gives you that mechanism to be able to see something, make changes and see the results of those changes in real-time,” explains Mr. Mooney.
Recent users of Energy Ottawa’s dashboard services include Morguard and the Kanata Research Park. While Energy Ottawa remains the sole Canadian distributor of the monitoring technology, it’s been used in the facilities of many major organizations in the US, including McDonald’s, Staples and Aramark.
In addition to the EnergyFlow Monitor, Energy Ottawa also offers in-depth audit services provided by their skilled team of energy engineers. Their energy and water audits assess a facility as a whole – taking everything from lighting to HVAC to water usage into consideration. Energy Ottawa then reports back to the client, both with usage data and recommendations on how to improve the building’s energy efficiency.
As an organization reduces its energy use, it in turn results in reduced greenhouse gas emissions, as less power needs to be generated for a facility in the first place. Energy Ottawa calculates a facility’s greenhouse gas emissions based on their energy consumption, and includes this data in its report. Energy Ottawa also identifies incentives that businesses can use to fund retrofitting or updates to their facilities.
Energy Ottawa is a trusted service provider for the Building Owners and Managers Association’s BOMA’s Best certification program, Canada’s largest environmental assessment and certification program for buildings. Each year, many of the recipients of BOMA certifications earned them through audits conducted by Energy Ottawa.
In addition to Energy Ottawa’s array of advanced reporting services, the organization also offers turnkey energy efficiency project management. Commonly referred to as “continuous commissioning,” Energy Ottawa is able to not only identify potential areas for improvement in a facility – the organization also has the ability to implement efficiency improving changes. This includes the installation of a number of new technologies, ranging from advanced lighting solutions, HVAC conversions, building automation systems and server room optimization to renewable energy and beyond.
To learn more about how Energy Ottawa can help your business or organization improve energy efficiency in your facilities, visit www.energyottawa.com.
