Photo by Bernd Sieker, CC BY-SAAs interest in distributed renewable generation and home energy system intensifies, it is useful to understand the underlying economics of such systems. Although there are many configurations for home energy systems, we have looked at a system including photovoltaic power generation, battery energy storage, electric vehicles and a control system with moderate load control. We are not including energy efficiency in the system evaluation, as many core energy efficiency measures are economically positive and should be implemented before installing home generation and power storage. This provides a better underlying demand that avoids installing excess generation and storage than if energy saving measures are implemented later. However, some load control and demand response is included that allows improved matching of the home power demand and supply.The return on home energy systems varies significantly based on location, as local consumption patterns, driving culture and renewable resource have large impacts on the economics of the system. In this analysis, public incentives (including subsidies, rebates or tax benefits) are explicitly excluded to allow evaluation of the underlying economics and comparison across markets.

Link between EnergyDeck and ESOS Auditor will make ESOS compliance quicker and easier Performance analytics firm IES and energy management platform provider EnergyDeck have today announced a partnership that will allow EnergyDeck customers to link the platform with IES’ ESOS Auditor to enable a quicker and easier route to ESOS compliance. The UK’s Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS) requires approximately 10,000 qualifying organisations to undertake energy audits that include 12 months of verifiable data. These organisations are now looking for the best and most efficient ways to collect, validate, evidence and store all the data required to calculate their total energy consumption and undertake energy audits. Each participating organisation needs to build an evidence pack to evidence the information in their ESOS compliance assessment.

Whatever else March is, it certainly can’t be accused of being uneventful for UK start-ups. Last week’s budget proved promising for the community, highlighting the government’s intention to provide further investment and support to drive growth for small businesses around the country.

How difficult can it be to put four puzzle pieces together? With a regular puzzle, a two year old could do it. In the building energy world, even the most skilful building and energy managers regularly fail at the task. As a result most buildings are operated well below their efficiency optimum. And it’s not for a lack of experience. Equipment is also not the issue – we have the technology in place today to design, build and operate highly efficient buildings, even without employing rocket science or black magic. So what then, is the issue? Simply speaking, it’s one of stakeholder engagement. But not the type of ‘stakeholder engagement’ that is typically referred to when it comes to behaviour change projects, and often limited to tenants. The stakeholders here span a much wider range. In an ideal scenario, the entire “building management stack” from landlords to building managers, FMs, contractors, consultants, energy providers and tenants would be engaged and aligned with one objective in mind: run the building as efficiently as possible, and generate benefits for everyone involved. How can this be done, you ask? Just follow these three easy steps: Understand the core drivers and motivations of each stakeholder group, and how they can benefit from efficiently operated buildings Identify the data and information that is required to asses the operating performance of the building and manage it, including the data owners, data type and quality Bring it all together in a single platform that represents the ‘single version of the truth’, is hardware agnostic, enables easy sharing across stakeholders and, above all, delivers meaningful insights that ultimately drive building efficiency. The good news is: the technology to do this exists today, the benefits are there for everyone and the business case works out. Let’s solve the puzzle together, shall we!

We’ve previously looked at how we will be supporting our users’ access to high quality data by simplifying data acquisition through out of the box integration with hardware and other data providers. Since then, we’ve been hard at work extending this capability and have now over a dozen data sources available, with many more already in the pipeline.

EnergyDeck is excited to announce that we’ve moved offices and are now located at the IDEALondon innovation centre.

RBS has selected EnergyDeck as a finalist in the Innovation Gateway; a major international search for new ways of reducing energy, water and waste.Launched in March this year, the RBS Innovation Gateway attracted more than 140 submissions in just 40 days, from brand new concepts through to market-ready products and services.The ideas came from innovators and small businesses (SMEs) around Britain and the world, from Perth in Scotland to Perth in Western Australia. The best ideas will be tested on the RBS estate of 2,500 buildings and branches in the UK.

Photo by Mack Male, CC BY-SAWe’ve all heard the horror stories about some of the highest rated LEED and BREEAM buildings being some of the worst culprits in terms of actual, operational energy and resource consumption (measured typically in kWh / m2, and several other metrics, provided there is enough data available). When the designers of such buildings are asked why their models differ so dramatically from reality, the answer is almost always the same: the building isn’t used in the way it was designed for.When asked to explain what that actually means, feedback tends to differ. Sometimes it’s a specific (new / sensitive / not properly commissioned etc.) piece of equipment that doesn’t work as expected. In other cases, the building is used by multiple tenants vs. a single one, other times twice as many people have been crammed into the space etc – but in general terms it all comes down to one stakeholder group: the occupants!

You may have noticed over the past few weeks that the way sites are presented on EnergyDeck has changed considerably. For one thing, you can now get up and running much faster with our simpler site creation forms, while at the same time we’ve added tabs to give you the option to capture much more additional information about your building and how you use it. As well as these two changes, there was an even more fundamental update relating to how buildings are conceptualised on EnergyDeck. From the beginning, we have provided users with the ability to create sites and subsites. This meant you could create a building and then model individual areas inside that building, for example floors. However, if you wanted to go further and divide the areas into smaller areas, for example divide the floors into individual rooms, you couldn’t. But that was then, and this is now: we’ve lifted this limitation meaning you can now divide and subdivide a building to your heart’s content!

We are delighted to announce that SPIMA recently signed a reseller agreement with EnergyDeck to provide its customers with an affordable and scalable energy management solution. SPIMA was formed in 1990 to serve the needs of the materials handling sector in Cyprus, especially in the areas of warehouse storage systems. The company's activities include a full range of supplies and services for the logistics industry. The latest announcement will see Spima entering the energy market through innovative products, as well as the offering of Energy Management through EnergyDeck. Read more about SPIMA.

If you read the technology press, you will have seen a flurry of articles about the Heartbleed Bug this week. This bug is a serious vulnerability in OpenSSL, a software library used by a large number of web sites to deliver their services over encrypted connections, including EnergyDeck. The security advisory about this vulnerability was first sent out on Monday night and we received it on Tuesday morning. We immediately took steps to verify whether the EnergyDeck site was impacted, discovered that it was and patched the system. This was done through an emergency fix by midday Tuesday. Revising our security configuration and procedures is a normal process at EnergyDeck and we do it regularly to ensure that every issue is dealt with as quickly as possible. In this particular case, we are indebted to the open source community and in particular the Debian project for releasing a patch very quickly after the initial vulnerability was disclosed.

Considerate Hoteliers, the UK’s oldest established and only network for responsible hoteliers; and EnergyDeck, an award-winning, crowd-based energy analytics platform, sign a strategic partnership to enable hoteliers around the world to save energy and resources.

It's been a busy time at EnergyDeck as we start adding more customers and features to our platform. We are constantly monitoring what is happening in the technology and energy/clean tech sectors so our platform is meeting and getting ahead of our customers requirements. One of trends that we are constantly monitoring is the impact of IoT on energy efficiency. One of the biggest challenges in driving energy efficiency at home and in the commercial space is the availability of energy data. Smart meters add huge value in increasing the frequency, accuracy and availability of consumption data but their take up is still slow. Smart meters for commercial use can still cost several hundred pounds and the fact that meter operators practically own the data (charging collection and management fees for every single meter feed) further compounds the “legacy” aspect of today’s energy management industry.

If you are an EnergyDeck customer, you will have recently received an email to tell you that we have migrated your account to a new plan. This is because we have simplified our account structure to align better with our customers’ needs, which in turn will allow us to develop more specific account functionality to provide everyone a better EnergyDeck experience. So what have we done and what’s in it for you?

If you work in technology, you probably know about the CeBIT trade show that takes place in Hanover every year. After all, it's the largest technology trade show in the world and has been going since 1986. This year, the UK is the partner country for CeBIT so you should see a lot of British companies in attendance, including a number of exciting start-ups, one of which is EnergyDeck.