Buildings and Meters module overview

The Buildings and Meters module contains organizations, buildings, and meters grouped into a familiar tree structure. The buildings and meters tree is often used by the Building Operations or Energy Management staff.

Organizations group buildings together and can represent departments, campuses, or other business units. They let you view subtotaled use, cost, and trends for all assigned buildings and meters. Organizations are also used in filters. Assigning a topmost place (organization) to a user restricts their access to a subset of the tree.

Buildings are located under an organization and can represent a physical structure or logical place and is the parent of one or more meters.

Assign meters to buildings to track the use and cost of a specific resource (commodity).

buildings and organizations displayed in tree

How to organize buildings?

  • According to reporting needs and your organization's existing facility management hierarchy.
  • Based on the physical layout of your buildings (all buildings in Pennsylvania) or based on the organizational structure (all buildings in District 9).
  • Setting or limiting user access. User access can be restricted to one or more organizations or buildings within the tree. You are only able to view and report on the buildings and meters that fall under this organization (sometimes referred to as topmost place or topmost place access).

You cannot edit your topmost place, cost center, or building. The root or your topmost organization cannot be changed.

Powerviews 

Powerviews are the charts and graphs you see throughout UtilityManagement.

  • For most charts you can download an image and the data that makes up the chart.
  • It's easy to see the applied filters and know what data is included in the chart.
  • A popover description next to the tile explains the chart.
  • Date ranges in the footer make it easy to know what data is included in the chart.

Module menu 
Greenhouse Gases
Link Meters to Emissions Sources Download a spreadsheet to link meters to emissions sources. You can link any meter with GHG details to an emissions source.
Scope Category Information View information on scope categories.
Cost Avoidance  
Cost Avoidance Calculations Displays task results. 
Update Settings for Existing Meters Update settings for multiple meters at one time. Baseline and Savings are reprocessed and logged on the Cost Avoidance Calculations page.
New Meter Defaults Cost Avoidance global settings determine the default values applied when meters are created. Changes to the default settings DO NOT affect existing meters.
Average Unit Cost (AUC) Range Set the lower and upper allowable AUC limits.
Services and Tools  

Interval Data Import

Import multiple meter readings for one or more meters.

Interval Data Import Formats

The import format maps the file columns in the source file to the specific data types in UtilityManagement.
Budget Worksheet An Excel spreadsheet generated from historical billing data to help you create a utility budget.
ENERGY STAR  
Settings To turn on ENERGY STAR settings for your database add one or more email recipients and set the earliest submission month.
Submit to ENERGY STAR Set your filters to select data to submit to ENERGY STAR.
Activity ENERGY STAR activity log.
Supported Commodities This lists the ENERGY STAR supported commodities for your database.
Settings  

Normalization

Normalization applies the same weather to all utility bills allowing you to compare energy use from year to year. This removes weather as a variable in analyzing energy conservation measures.

Target Comparison

A target comparison places a target line in charts based on a previous billing year.
Custom Benchmarks* Create three additional methods for grouping and ranking your buildings. *This is a licensed feature.

Custom Fields for Buildings

Create and edit custom fields. Custom fields are useful for creating groups.

Custom Fields for Meters

Create and edit custom fields. Custom fields are useful for creating groups.
Custom Fields for Channels Create and edit custom fields. 
Hierarchy This selection determines how your Buildings and Meters tree is displayed.
List by Hierarchy Display your tree by hierarchy.
List by Meter Group Display your tree by meter group.

The display options let you view your tree objects by their name, code, or both the name and code. The tree is listed in alphabetical order, as a result each display option lists the tree objects in a different order.


These options control the tree view.

Display Name

Shows just the name.

Display Code

Shows just the code.

Display Name [Code]

Shows name followed by code.

Display Code [Name]

Show code followed by name.

Show Inactive Meters

Show or hide inactive meters.
   

Permissions

A report of user roles and their permissions is available for download on the Users and Roles page.

Custom user roles are created by administrators.