Last year, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) selected FirstFuel to utilize remote energy analytics across its building portfolio. The company said this announcement makes it the energy analytics provider for the two largest property owners in the United States.

The full-scale FirstFuel deployment across GSA’s entire portfolio of covered facilities follows last year’s 26-building pilot program. The company said the initial program uncovered $6.5 million in energy savings potential across the buildings, some of which were missed by previous on-site energy audits. Approximately half of savings opportunities identified were operational in nature, enabling GSA energy managers to implement efficiency improvements at little or no cost — typically without the need for time-intensive upgrades or on-site work.

“Finding unique, cost-effective, and potentially transformative ways to better manage our energy use has been a significant priority for the GSA in recent years,” said Dr. Dorothy Robyn, Public Buildings Service commissioner for the GSA. “We have made significant advances to improve efficiency on many fronts, and FirstFuel’s solution and progress-to-date provides a great example of such an advance.”

Over the past three years, GSA has deployed 400 advanced smart meters in its buildings, to deliver better information and management of energy in its buildings. The FirstFuel program has shown to be a way to gain further value from the smart meter investment. The remote audits completed in the pilot phase, which represented an 85 percent cost savings versus on-site audits and were delivered five-to-seven times faster, helped the GSA move from “red” to “green” in meeting its audit requirements within the allotted timeframe. FirstFuel also showed additional promise in its ability to help deliver and track GSA’s 2 percent annual energy reduction target across the portfolio.

Over the next four years, FirstFuel will conduct remote audits for up to 300 covered facilities in the GSA building portfolio. In addition, the GSA will utilize FirstFuel’s post-installation remote monitoring solution, which enables GSA managers to track the impact of their efficiency actions over time through the FirstFuel web portal. Through the expanded deployment, FirstFuel has now identified over $14 million in energy savings across 90 remote audits and 47 million square feet of GSA real estate.

“We are thrilled to continue our strategic work with the GSA and their forward-looking approach to energy efficiency,” said Swap Shah, CEO of FirstFuel. “Our pilot program savings identification and subsequent energy reduction impact gave the GSA the confidence that our Remote Building Analytics platform could be rapidly and cost-effectively scaled to advance their aggressive portfolio-wide energy reduction efforts. Our platform has been explicitly designed to support government agencies across all major steps in the energy efficiency lifecycle. We owe part of that design to the excellent insight we’ve gained through our partnership with the GSA.”

For more information, visit www.firstfuel.com.

Publication date: 11/11/2013

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