Utility Tracking and Benchmarking Blog | WegoBlog

Whether you want to be a more informed citizen or just want to kill some time before 5 on a Friday afternoon, WegoWise has got you covered. There is a lot of data out there (trust us, we know) and it can be challenging to present it in fun and informative ways.  So we put together some data visualizations that we like to share with you. So peruse our best links, give us some feedback and be sure to share some of the info you just gleaned with other interested parties at the parties you are hopefully attending this weekend. Brought to you by Dan, Nate, Lily, Kate and Bert.

Multifamily housing presents an excellent opportunity for energy efficiency measures for three primary reasons. First, much of this housing stock is old: according to the Energy Programs Consortium, 85% of multifamily housing in the United States was constructed before 1990. This means many of the structures need repairs and most have building systems that are outdated. Next, the physical characteristics of multifamily housing, such as exterior exposure per residence, make it easier to perform retrofits. And finally, the larger scale of these types of properties means that improvements result in larger total reductions in usage and larger financial savings. Due to these factors, EPC found that multifamily buildings could save anywhere from 30 – 75% of energy through efficiency measures. We’ve observed this ourselves through the work we’ve been doing in Massachusetts with the LEAN Multifamily Benchmarking Inventory. In some cases, owners have reduced their energy bill by more than 50% through retrofits.

While many an energy geek would tell you that solar is sexy, even when awkwardly jutting off a roofline, not everyone would agree.  Installations like the one to the right cause architects to quitely weep and neighbors to loudly curse.  Since no one should have to choose between tears and cursing and energy efficiency, Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) came to the rescue, allowing a happy intersection of aesthetics and energy production. 

Whether you want to be a more informed citizen or just want to kill some time before 5 on a Friday afternoon, WegoWise has got you covered. Our readership amongst children is not as high as we would like. Turns out, a lot of children, especially the littlest ones, can't even read at all. But every kid, no matter how small, should know the importance of energy conservation. We put together a list for you. So peruse our best links, give us some feedback and be sure to share some of the info you just gleaned with other interested parties at the parties you are hopefully attending this weekend. Brought to you by Dan, Nate, Lily, Kate and Bert.

A near constant challenge for every property manager with whom we work, is trying to get their tenants interested in saving energy. One would think the obvious monetary benefits would be enough but what about those tenants who don't pay utility bills? This blog posts owes thanks to several very clever property managers who shared their green-tenant event calendars with the world.

A few weeks ago, we had a guest post from Shiva Prakesh with New Ecology, discussing residential cogeneration. Micro-CHP (Combined Heat and Power) systems are a smaller-scale evolution of the more common CHP systems serving large sections of cities or industrial complexes. At WegoWise, we love cogeneration systems because they drastically improve energy efficiency of power production. Tom Casten (an expert in the co-gen field) predicted in 2008 that by using cogeneration systems, the US could provide about 20% of its energy needs from simply recycling industrial waste heat. 

It seems like not a day goes by without people in our office gathering around the proverbial water-cooler (which in our case is a non-proverbial foosball table) and discussing the Olympics. This got us thinking, and blogging, about how we could reward our customers for their energy and money savings, as if the savings themselves weren't reward enough. So we created the WegOlympics and combed through our database of almost 10,000 buildings to pick the winners. Our Opening Ceremony, in which we chronicled the brief history and meteoric rise of WegoWise through interpretive energy tracking, did not get as much media coverage as the boondoggle in London, but we are hoping that our Medal Ceremony can turn the tables in our favour. Based on a similar judging system as the Men's Gymnastics Floor Routine, we have hand-picked the winners of this year's 2012 WegOlympics. Here are your winners. You have made your country very proud.

With energy efficiency becoming increasingly important as cities strive to be green, benchmarking has become a standard in cities like New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and most recently, in DC!  The Clean and Affordable Energy Act of 2008 requires all private buildings over 50,000 gross square feet in DC to report their energy use to the District Department of the Environment.  WegoWise is here to break down the facts and tell you the top ten things you need to know if you are a building owner in DC:

Green transportation is inching its way into our future. Public transit use has increased dramatically in the past few years, bike sharing systems have rolled into most major cities in the US (with many more to come!), and there is even talk of building a high-speed rail network throughout the nation.