SmartEnergy News

August 22, 2011

Welcome to SmartEnergy News

Welcome to the first edition of the Energent Monitor. This quarterly newsletter will keep you up to date of the happenings and developments at Energent.

This first edition of Energent’s newsletter will cover many topics that are important to Energent users. We will highlight the new release of our web portal earlier this summer. Energent spends a significant amount of time and resources improving our products to enable our users to maximize the Energent system, find the greatest savings opportunities, and have an enjoyable user experience. To this end, we like to inform our users about these enhancements to ensure you are able to take advantage of them.

This issue covers the recent product enhancement releases that were released early in June. These enhancements include Energy Equivalents, weekly aggregation, and tracker filtering. We are also announcing the newest module for Energent. EnergentGHG, Energent’s comprehensive platform to analyze and report real time greenhouse gas emissions, is giving companies unprecedented insight into how their operations impact the environment. GHG emissions are more than an environmental consideration, they have significant impact on the bottom line and EnergentGHG’s comprehensive reporting tool gives companies a robust reporting engine to provide audit-ready reports for scope 1 and scope 2 emissions.

Finally, we will have a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section where we will answer a series of questions that are posed to us from customers. This will help our current customers stay up to date on how others are using the Energent platform to benefit their business and save money.

We look forward to your input on how we can make this newsletter more relevant to you. Please provide feedback to newsletter [at] energent [dot] com and we will do our best to incorporate your great suggestions.

Energent & OPA’s Conservation Fund

Energent is pleased to announce its involvement in the Ontario Power Authority’s (OPA) Conservation Fund program. This project is a unique opportunity for industrial clients to take their energy conservation program to the next level. The key to success will be a highly coordinated effort between key industrial clients and our team of experienced resources.

The goal of the Conservation Fund Project is to support specific conservation projects with benefits such as:

• Reduce energy intensity 10-20% or more for industrial customers

• Manage peak electrical demand

On top of the anticipated energy reductions of 15-20% at each facility, the program generates valuable feedback for energy conservation programs in Ontario

“This is a unique opportunity for Energent and the Altech Group to leverage the resources available from local electrical and natural gas companies to provide a better solution for their customers” says Chris Reid, President and CEO of Energent. “This is all made possible because of the OPA’s Conservation Fund. This Fund will allow Energent to bring all the parties together to provide a comprehensive plan to deliver a fully managed energy program for our clients. This project is bringing the key organizations to the table with the same goal in mind; ensuring the success of OPA programs designed to improve the capacity of industrial companies to deliver energy efficient manufacturing processes.”

June 3rd Release Notes

You may have noticed the Energent web portal has had a few updates which are included as part of your subscription. Please log in at your earliest convenience to review these updates, and as always, provide any and all comments to Energent by email at info [at] energent [dot] com.

Most exciting is our new dashboard control, Energy Equivalents. This control facilitates user awareness of your energy consumption by visualizing energy use data in a way that connects with non-technical stakeholders. Other upgrades include Weekly Aggregation, New Main Navigation, and Tracker Category Filtering.

Energent believes in continually investing in our software to make it easier for our end users to get the information they need out of the system. Look for future improvements in the coming months.

Energent's Newest Module: EnergentGHG

EnergentGHG provides our customers with greenhouse gas (GHG) emission information related to electricity and natural gas consumption. A combination of dashboard controls and reports provide accurate, up-to-date GHG emission data. Specifically, EnergentGHG will:

Calculate carbon footprint for scope 1 & 2 emissions
Promote a positive image
Influence behaviour changes
Complete mandatory & voluntary GHG emissions reports
Participate in carbon trading opportunities

Energent provides users with dashboard controls that report emissions and reduction information in real time. On top of real-time dashboard, users are able to generate reports directly from the dashboard to give accurate reports immediately.

EnergentGHG is the newest module released by Energent. More information will be released in the coming weeks, but there is some exciting opportunities to enhance your Energent platform with EnergentGHG.

Please look for an email coming from Energent explaining how to get started with EnergentGHG and what it means for your organization. There will be a process for you to access the application as well as provide valuable feedback to us during this evaluation time.

Frequently Asked Questions

Energent’s Energy Analysts are key members of your energy team. These energy experts are strong technical resource to help you build custom reports, and understand how to maximize the effectiveness of conservation projects using the Energent platform. There will be a section in each newsletter that will highlight the best questions; and answers that are most relevant to Energent Users. Please submit your questions to your EA or to info [at] energent [dot] com and look for the answers in the next issue. Of course, feel free to ask your EA any question you have at any time.

December Newsletter

Energent Attends Industry-Leading events across North America

Recently Energent has invested in attending a number of high profile events across North America to ensure the staff is staying on top of all the latest news, technologies, and information for energy management in the commercial, healthcare, and industrial industries. At these events, Energent is able to listen and participate in leading-edge discussions and debates on the latest research on electricity efficiency and bring this information back to their clients. Let's take a look at some of these events that Energent participated in:

Canadian Healthcare Engineering Society

Energent participated in the 2011 CHES Conference in Winnipeg, MB from September 25 - 27th, 2011. At this industry event, Energent is able to meet with the top Energy Engineers from Canadian Hospitals. These very hard-working people share insight into how they use the Energent system to help manage energy budgets, electricity, gas, water, and steam comsumption, and report greenhouse gas emissions and targets to stakeholders. They teach us how to improve our system by sharing best practices, their daily challenges, and new ways that we can make their life easier as the operators of these very complicated and unique buildings.

Energent is also very proud to showcase the successes that their clients have in sustainability and energy management. In the next section, you will hear about how Chatham-Kent Health Alliance won a very prestigious award at the CHES 2011 event. Look for Energent to be at many of the regional CHES events and in Montreal in 2012.

USGBC GreenBuild

Energent joined their partner, SCIenergy at the 2011 USGBC GreenBuild Conference at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre (MTCC) from October 4 - 7, 2011. This is the first time GreenBuild ventured out of the United States to showcase the largest energy efficiency and sustainability building conference in the world. In preparation for the event, Energent worked with the Convention Centre to model and monitor the electricity use at the conference and compared it to similar shows throughout the year. Some very interesting results came out of the analysis. More work is needed but the findings are very thought provoking.

On top of working with the MTCC, Energent participated in the unveiling of the 18 York building's exclusive event, showcasing the latest "smart building technology". In partnership with Ellis Don Construction, Cisco Systems, and SCIenergy, Energent was able to showcase the actual electricity consumption in real-time at this state-of-the-art building in downtown Toronto. The possibilities for the thousands of office towers in big cities across North America is tremendous.

During the event, Energent's team participated in the latest LEED certification courses, heard world-renowned speakers talk about the energy savings opportunities in commercial and institutional buildings, as well as saw the latest technology available for retrofits.

Look for Energent and SCIenergy to team up for next year's GreenBuild conference in San Francisco and compare how the different shows use energy.

World Energy Engineering Conference

The next conference that was on Energent's very busy conference tradeshow was the World Energy Engineering Conference (WEEC) in Chicago. This is the premiere show that is put on by the Association of Energy Engineers (AEE) that showcases some of the world's leading minds in energy efficiency engineering. Energent was positioned very well, giving conference attendees the opportunity to see how the latest technology in Energy Management Information Systems are helping organizations understand how they are consuming energy, and how to effectively reduce that consumption. Energent got a lot of very encouraging feedback as building operators are undersatnding the value of real-time monitoring as a strategic opportunity.

Energent also had the opportunity to see presentations from world-leading energy engineers on the latest trends, topics, and technology in energy efficiency and energy engineering research. This information is quickly brought back to the Energy Analysts who are able to share that with the clients they work with.

BC Hydro Power Smart Forum

The final stop on Energent's 6 week fall conference marathon was Vancouver for the BC Hydro's bi-annual Power Smart Forum. This 3 day event at the Vancouver Convention Centre showcases some of the exciting and leading-edge work that BC Hydro is doing with its customers and partners. BC Hydro is widely considered one of the worlds most progressive utilities, regularly creating programs and incentives to engage and encourage customers to invest in electricity conservation.

Energent was there as a participant in the Continuous Optimization Program, promoting the benefits and running seminars on how to take advantage of the funding available for commercial buildings to participate. This program has been hugely successful for BC Hydro, as hundreds of commercial buildings have an EMIS installed and are monitoring their electricity consumption in real-time. Energent is one of only 3 approved vendors for the program.

Energent is also a member of BC Hydro's Industrial Alliance Program, providing class-leading, innovative EMIS software for big industrial users. Energent is helping BC Hydro define a similar program to COPs in the industrial sector, as our experience working with complex industrial clients will help BC Hydro understand the value and the opportunity in these challenging environments.

We will continue to attend industry conferences and keep our client base up to date on the latest information. Look for presentations and video uploads for presentations that Energent presented at or attended in the near future.

Energent Success Story

At the Canadian Healthcare Engineering Society (CHES) national conference in Winnipeg, MB, long-time Energent client, Chatham-Kent Health Alliance one the top Energy Efficiency award. The Wayne McLellan Award of Excellence recognizes hospitals that create innovative and sustainable environmental programs. The Wayne McLellan Award is especially meaningful as he began the "Green Team" at CKHA, and his vision and leadership led the organization to where it is today.

CKHA's Environmental Leadership Program (which is available here to view) has been an evolving program that has grown with time. It incorporates waste management and waste reduction program, Energy Management Program, and an innovative Environmental Expo that allows employees and volunteers at the hospital learn about the opportunities to contribute to the sustainability of CKHA.

We congratulate Beth Hall, Harrie Bos, and Carrie Sophonow from CKHA on developing and executing on their Energy Stewardship Program. We are very proud of each and every one of our clients, and celebrate when they are recognized.

Energent Tips & Tricks

In this edition, we will explore the new look of the Energent dashboard. Recently, Energent released a new look to the dashboard, making it easier and faster to find the tools to report, analyze, and understand the energy data that Energent is collecting. Below are a few pictures and explanations of the changes that have occurred in the dashboard.