Res–Intel is designed to provide actionable insights to improve utility profitability, customer satisfaction, and operational effectiveness.
Residential Demand Side Management (DSM) programs represent fantastic opportunities for improving customer satisfaction and lowering energy procurement costs.
However, customer participation is very low: 85% of Americans have not participated in utility energy efficiency program over the last 3 years.
Most utilities have cost-effective programs to help their customers save money, but the uptake of these programs is low.
As a result of these low participation rates, utilities know very little about their customers because they are not volunteering critical data to the utilities.
Ideally, utilities should strategically target customers using customized invitations tailored to their household’s attributes. They can better target efficiency programs if they know what their customers need.
Participation in Energy Efficiency Programs
Software Features
The Res–Intel Graphical User Interface (GUI) offers several significant benefits that improve data input and output management and analysis, enhanced performance, and added security.
Interface AdvantageS
Our Interface improves input and output performance.
- Security Advantages: The Res–Intel Graphical User Interface (GUI) and computations operate behind the utility firewall in order to support decision-makers. Unlike customer-facing software, Res-Intel is viewed only by employees.
- Input Advantages: Our “middleware” software application utilizes an HTML graphical user interface to control the database and statistical package.
- Performance Advantages: The Res–Intel GUI utilizes state of the art Web 2.0 technologies to help increase the speed of the application.
- Output Advantages: Users are able to generate outputs using either the existing Res-Intel dashboard or through other widely available database formats or statistical software tools.
Data Features
The Res-Intel Benchmark.AI performs advanced spatial and building energy analytics for mass-scale benchmarking.
Benchmark.AI
Benchmark.AI aggregates real estate and utility energy and water data to the complex (or campus) level, facilitating comparisons of resource use on a mass-scale.
- Benchmark.AI cleans and normalizes messy utility data to enable mass-scale building energy and water benchmarking.
- The software estimates building occupancy and other key data fields necessary for utility DSM programs.
- Res-Intel’s remote sensing analysis allows water-use intensity benchmarking.
User Dashboard
The Res–Intel user dashboard includes real-time tracking of program results and reports that can be user customized for utility behavioral programs.
- Res–Intel has developed peer comparison reports for electricity, gas, and water.
- Res–Intel’s building energy and water analytics provide micro-targeted conservation recommendations for each residential property.
- Customer analytical data can be extracted through the map extract or through database queries.
Demand, Benchmarking, & Program Features
Res–Intel’s software provides utility DSM staff with real-time, weather-normalized savings estimates. The customer analytics provide demand response programs with estimates of peak kWh savings at the household level.
Demand Response
Due to growing demand and aging infrastructure, electric, gas and water utilities need to make huge investments to meet critical demand levels.
- Demand response is one way to meet peak demand by reducing usage by existing customers at critical times.
- Res–Intel’s spatial capabilities identify high-usage residences that can be targeted for demand response programs. The software’s predictive analytics then identify those high-usage homeowners with the highest probability of participating in demand response programs.
- These demand response investments increase system reliability and avoid disruptions to supply, which will improve relationships with customers, regulators, and other critical stakeholders.
Low Income Programs
Res–Intel identifies low income and disadvantaged households for federal and state weatherization programs.
- Low income homes are typically older and less energy efficient than owner-occupied housing. Since 100% of low-income weatherization costs are typically funded by utilities and/or governments, identifying the most cost-effective households can stretch existing budgets in order to serve additional customers.
- Using real estate, US census, and GIS data, the application identifies low-income households with the highest need for weatherization or other DSM program offerings. The software can also identify households that are likely to qualify for LIHEAP or Weatherization Assistance Program benefits.
- Res–Intel’s need-based incentive identification algorithms can increase low-income programs’ cost-effectiveness as well as dramatically increase the energy savings benefits received by the low-income program participants.
Loss Protection
The theft of electricity, gas and water is not just a problem for the developing world.
- One electric utility estimates theft at over $100 million a year, attributing the thefts mainly to marijuana growing. In other regions, customers steal energy to avoid the high costs of air conditioning in hot areas.
- Res–Intel’s advanced analytics can help utilities identify and reduce energy and water theft. This helps reduce costs for all the law-abiding customers who aren’t subsidizing energy and water theft.
Residential Benchmarking
Imagine how important it is to be able to benchmark the energy and water usage for each and every house in a state.
- To be most useful, these benchmarks control for occupancy and weather using advanced analytical techniques.
- With robust benchmarks of energy and water usage, decision makers can effectively identify abnormally high usage residences, and then target homeowners with customized DSM incentives to reduce their usage!
- Res–Intel performs large-scale residential energy and water benchmarking to improve demand side management program outcomes!
Behavioral Programs
There is a “behavioral” revolution in demand side management programs.
- Stakeholders are realizing that homeowners are influenced by their perceptions of what other people are doing.The most well-known behavioral program simply gives homeowners a report about how their own energy consumption compares to their “neighbors”, which typically results in about 2% energy savings.
- Res–Intel’s need-based incentive identification algorithms can increase low-income programs’ cost-effectiveness as well as dramatically increase the energy savings benefits received by the low-income program participants.
- The Res–Intel team of social scientists believes that existing approaches to behavioral programs can be improved upon in two ways.
- By Reducing Costs: If we know peer comparisons work, why aren’t utilities deploying them across all their customers? Because the firms that are doing the comparisons are charging heaps of money for a very basic product. Res–Intel software can develop peer comparison reports for about 1/5th the cost of other companies by in-sourcing the implementation of the program to utility staff.
- By Being More Creative: There is robust empirical evidence that consumer decisions can be influenced to reduce energy and water waste. We have other behavioral pilot projects ready to be implemented!
How Our Software Can Help You
Res–Intel can help utilities reduce costs, improve operational efficiency, and increase DSM savings rates through the better utilization of existing human resources and program offerings.
Improved Performance
Mechanisms used to improve business performance:
- Visualization of Conservation Savings and Program Opportunities: Res–Intel’s user-friendly interface enables users to traverse the wide range of databases that are necessary to effectively monitor residential energy use.
- Integration of Real Estate Data: Res–Intel extracts the most value for DSM intelligence from re-purposed real estate data.
- Better Customer Engagement: By providing residential customers customized DSM incentives to best meet their needs, utilities can develop stronger customer relationships and increase brand loyalty.
- Improved Reliability: Res–Intel’s real-time program monitoring can identify anomalies and outliers that would be impossible for manual data processing.
- Lower Staffing Requirements: Recruiting and retaining data scientists is time consuming and costly. Res–Intel can reduce utilities’ reliance on expensive consultants to perform statistical analysis by adding skill sets to existing Human Resource employees. Res–Intel’s ouptuts can be used to validate consultants’ findings and provide feedback on DSM programs to transform their performance.
Greater Advantages
Benefits compared to other software solutions:
- Transparency: Res–Intel uses proven building energy regression modeling. Rather than black-box “algorithms”, Res–Intel’s source code is readily available for clients to be able to understand and replicate the modeling techniques.
- Legally Prudent: Res–Intel uses publicly available data to supplement customer billing data. By excluding social media and other sensitive marketing or credit-reporting data in its analyses, Res–Intel is more aligned with regulator’s potential concerns about customer data privacy.
- Secure: Because Res–Intel operates behind the utility firewall, compliance with data governance policies is easy to attain.
- Intelligent Infrastructure: Res–Intel’s data warehousing and outputs utilize industry standard formats. The DSM intelligence created by Res–Intel is scalable and can be integrated into other divisions’ operations and into future or current enterprise-wide business intelligence solutions. Due to its scalable design, Res–Intel can help break down information silos between divisions by providing readily available program and sales data to analysts across the enterprise.
- Cost-Effective: Res–Intel utilizes existing utility information technology infrastructure, eliminating the need for massively expensive hardware and software upgrades.
- Dedicated DSM Solution: Res–Intel is specifically designed to improve DSM and customer service outcomes. Large information technology firms offering DSM analytics are likely to have adapted existing customer-relations’ management software to DSM analytics. By trying to “pigeon hole” DSM analytics into a existing framework, they are likely to experience cost over-runs and degraded performance compared to a customized DSM software solution.
We Can Help You!
Our software, designed to provide actionable insights, can help you improve profitability, customer satisfaction, and operational effectiveness.
Utilities
How We Can Help You:
- Improve customer service;
- Benchmark residential energy and water usage;
- Increase DSM program uptake;
- Defer distribution system investments;
- Improve business performance;
- Monitor program savings.
Energy Service Companies
How We Can Help You:
- Identify lowest cost residential energy efficiency and demand response supplies;
- Develop target list of households for marketing;
- Match residential customers to new technologies.
State and Local Governments
How We Can Help You:
- Benchmark residential energy and water consumption by municipality;
- Target cost-effective low-income weatherization;
- Achieve energy and climate goals.