Case Study: Region of Peel

Summary

• EEM Suite ™ identified $8,000,000 in savings over a two-year period

• Annual energy budget in excess of $40 million

• Process thousands of billing accounts from multiple vendors, plus monitoring of utility interval data

• Recently moved from on-premise to a Cloud-based solution and added new customizations such as dashboard integrations, variable tax rates, SMOG alerts.

Overview

The Region’s bills are entered into EEM Suite Bill Analyst, a component of EEM Suite™. The system immediately identifies billing anomalies, such as unusually high usage, through the automatic application of more than 30 bill validation tests.  These validation tests have helped the Region identify many billing discrepancies for which they seek timely resolution with their utility providers.  Users are also proactively notified by the system of missing or late bills which has helped ROP reduce late fees.

Details

Region of Peel Uses EEM Suite to Centralize Energy Approach

Region Saves $8 Million in Less Than Two Years

Profile

The Region of Peel (ROP) is a municipal government comprised of two major cities, (Mississauga and Brampton) and one town (Caledon) immediately adjacent to the City of Toronto. With a population of more than one million, the Region stretches out to 1,225 square kilometers (more than 760 square miles) in territory. It is the second largest municipality in Ontario and manages an annual energy budget in excess of $40 million dollars.

Opportunity

On May 1, 2002, Ontario moved from a monopoly-based electricity system to a deregulated, competitive electricity market. Consumers could choose to buy electricity from their local distribution company (LDC) or from an electricity retailer.  The Region’s billing system was unable to take advantage of the cost breaks afforded by bulk energy purchases in a deregulated market.

“After deregulation, utility bills became highly complicated,” said Steve Hall, Director of Corporate Energy for ROP. “We are very large and have many different properties; residential, commercial office buildings and municipal water treatment plants. “We needed to put in place a system that could verify and validate our energy bills and have the flexibility to support our planned participation in the real time price market.” 

Solution

To meet this challenge ROP began a comprehensive search for scalable software tools that could handle several thousand billing accounts and offer bill validation in real time. The product had to be ready to use immediately and be a proven success. Most importantly, it had to have an extremely accurate accounting engine. 

Faced with the additional burden of increased budgetary pressures, the energy management system also needed to support the Region’s efforts to reduce operational costs and manage all aspects of energy supply and demand.

The Region selected and implemented Energy Hippo’s Enterprise Energy Management (EEM) Suite to process and manage thousands of utility bills from multiple utility providers.  EEM Suite was also chosen for real-time monitoring of utility interval meters and submeters for loads in excess of 200 kilowatts at 60 sites throughout the municipality.  

Overview

The Region’s bills are entered into EEM Suite Bill Analyst, a component of EEM Suite™. The system immediately identifies billing anomalies, such as unusually high usage, through the automatic application of more than 30 bill validation tests.  These validation tests have helped the Region identify many billing discrepancies for which they seek timely resolution with their utility providers.  Users are also proactively notified by the system of missing or late bills which has helped ROP reduce late fees.

The Region’s complex rate structures required more than bill validation to identify billing inaccuracies. ROP worked with its LDCs to install revenue meters which could be accessed by the Region.  The data is collected and transferred to the EEM Suite database via an ODBC (open database connectivity) data gateway. EEM Suite calculates billing amounts by applying complex rates that are modeled using EEM Suite Rate Modeler to the revenue meter interval data. Actual bills are compared to the calculated bills which are also stored in EEM Suite database. Significant bill errors have been identified by the Region as a result of the Region’s verification process.

With both utility and interval data housed in a centralized enterprise energy management system the Region has begun to leverage the information provided by such data.  In one instance using EEM Suite’s comprehensive energy analysis tools, the Region noticed that facility equipment continued to operate on weekends while buildings were not occupied. The building automation schedule was reset to avoid this unnecessary usage in the future.

The Region’s corporate energy group is also using the analysis tools to better serve its internal customers.  In providing timely detail and summary reports of each department’s energy costs the users of energy are better able to manage their consumption.  In the past, this was a time consuming manual process. 

Benefits and Results

In less than two years using EEM, the Region of Peel shaved $8 million or 20% off its annual energy budget. The savings came through a number of elements:

• Cost recovery from billing errors for both current and historical invoices

• Cost avoidance of late fees associated with missing or late bills

• Improved analysis of facility types and consumption profiles to identify proper rate classifications and contractual opportunities

• Operational efficiencies achieved through analysis of load profiles

“Just a few months ago, using EEM, we found $1.7 million worth of billing errors charged to 13 large accounts—billing errors that started right after deregulation and were continually repeated,” Hall said. “The savings the Region achieved directly benefited the residents of our municipality by ensuring that their tax dollars are spent wisely. We will be using this software for many years to come.”

Next Steps

With the success of the initial phase of the project the Region continues to expand the use of EEM Suite.  Subsequent phases will include:

• Real time market price monitoring to support demand response initiatives

• Electronic bill data processing

• Expansion of monitoring and analysis of metered sites

“We’re excited to go forward and take advantage of the tools delivered,” said Hall. “With our talented staff and the superior solutions offered by EEM, we hope to see even more savings and efficiency in the future.”