energyOrbit and Missouri River Energy Services Further Big Data Potential of Energy Efficiency Analytics through Standardized Language For Building Performance Data

By adopting the Department of Energy Building Energy Data Exchange Specification (BEDES), each company leads their industry in adopting a common dictionary of language for building performance data

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 13, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- In an effort to overcome barriers that prevent utilities and third-party implementers from developing forward-looking big data analytics, as well as  exchanging, integrating, and analyzing information about building performance and energy efficiency programs, energyOrbit is utilizing the new industry standard of terms and language called Building Energy Data Exchange Specification (BEDES). Missouri River Energy Services (MRES), is the first energyOrbit utility customer to implement this new standard.

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BEDES is a dictionary of terms and definitions that were developed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. It can be used in tools and activities that help stakeholders make energy investment decisions, track building performance, and implement energy efficient policies and programs. Ultimately the adoption of BEDES within the energy sector opens up the potential for big data analysis, enabling more scientific decision making throughout the building energy performance space.

"Lack of consistency in the nomenclature often translates into lack of consistency in measurement and reporting," said Alex Zeltser, CTO of energyOrbit. "As a vendor of EE/DSM software, energyOrbit is keenly interested in seeing the terminology used for energy efficiency measure implementation standardized. This allows us to leverage measure libraries developed for one project or jurisdiction for others in the future. By encouraging and making it easy for our customers to implement these data standards we are bringing even greater productivity improvements to teams using our solutions, all the while paving new avenues for broader collaboration within the energy sector."

By and large, today's energy companies still use varying terminologies to organize, report and even explain data. This nonuniformity in lexicon causes frequent industry-wide inconsistencies in how EE initiatives are implemented, tracked and measured. It also makes it more difficult for companies to collaborate on projects due to a lack of uniformity in key terms.