Application helps manage energy efficiency across multiple buildings
MEDINA, MN (February 8, 2016) – kWh360 today announced the general availability of a software application for managing energy efficiency of buildings. The product, called 360-Cloud, helps building owners manage energy use and cost across many facilities.
The cloud-based application is designed for use by retailers, manufacturers, warehouses, distribution centers, education institutions, health care providers, government, and the hospitality industry.
The software brings new and unique value to the crowded field of energy management systems. So says Abtar Singh, chief executive officer and founder of kWh360.
“Other energy-management software focuses on controlling or monitoring energy use,” Singh said. “It doesn’t show where companies can save money. Nor is it fast and easy to set up and use.”
“If you operate a dozen or a hundred buildings, other systems don’t show your best opportunities to reduce your energy cost,” Singh said.
“They don’t show which buildings are most or least energy efficient, considering differences in weather. They don’t suggest where you should spend your capital budget to get the biggest bang for your buck in energy efficiency. And they don’t predict how much you could save by implementing specific changes.”
The new 360-Cloud application is different, Singh said. Besides monitoring energy use and cost, it also identifies opportunities to reduce energy cost.
360-Cloud can track actual energy savings over multiple initiatives. And it can track cumulative savings over several years, adjusting for changes in utility rates, weather, building square footage, energy-consuming assets, and other such factors.
“If you operate buildings across weather zones, those in the more extreme weather will always appear less energy efficient,” Singh said. “So when you rate the relative energy efficiency of buildings in different locations, you must adjust for differences in local weather. And when you rate the energy efficiency of a single building over time, you must also adjust for changes in weather.”
The difficulty of the calculations prevents many building owners from doing them, Singh said. It’s even harder to continue doing the calculations over several years. The spreadsheets get too complex.
That’s one more way the 360-Cloud software adds value, Singh said. It normalizes weather across geographies and times by using hourly local data.
Without such normalization, it’s hard for companies to protect and maintain any energy savings their projects achieve. They can’t track true energy efficiency over multiple periods because each period has different weather.
After normalizing for differences in weather over time and location, 360-Cloud alerts building owners when energy efficiency declines in a location.
The application reports its findings in language financial and non-technical executives can understand, Singh said. “You don’t have to be an energy manager to use it. And you can implement it in a few weeks, using data from utility bills or electronic monitoring systems.”
360-Cloud is the first commercial release in a suite of products from kWh360. Other releases will follow soon, Singh said.
360-Cloud is already in commercial use in retail, production and distribution facilities.
For more on 360-Cloud and kWh360, please visit http://www.kWh360.com
About kWh360 Inc.
kWh360 (www.kwh360.com) provides software applications and services that help organizations manage the energy efficiency of their buildings across many locations. The company offers tools for building owners, energy consultants and providers of energy-efficiency technologies. Software tools from kWh360 help their users conduct energy surveys. They also perform computer modeling and payback calculations, and they facilitate collection of utility rebates.
Media Contact:
Abtar Singh, info@kWh360.com
Ph. 651-605-1093