LEXINGTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--FirstFuel Software, the trusted source for energy use intelligence, today announced that the US General Services Administration (GSA) has selected its Remote Building Analytics (RBA) platform to help drive comprehensive efficiency savings and meet key energy reduction targets across its entire U.S. building portfolio.
Last year, the U.S. Department of Defense selected FirstFuel to utilize remote, zero-touch energy analytics across its building portfolio. Today’s announcement makes FirstFuel an energy analytics provider of choice 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 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 unique way to unlock 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% 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, the equivalent of nearly 20% of total office space in Manhattan. 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. The deployment expands the scope of the initial pilot program by nearly 15 times. 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.
“GSA has been very impressed by the energy usage information that FirstFuel provides for us,” said Dr. Dorothy Robyn. “FirstFuel assists the GSA in meeting our energy efficiency and savings goals in our buildings.”
FirstFuel Software is a platform for energy use intelligence that utilizes advanced meter data analytics to reveal comprehensive set of savings opportunities at dramatically lower cost and speeds. The platform provides end-to-end commercial building analytics support across every stage of the efficiency lifecycle, and works seamlessly with on-site implementation activities to help deliver deep energy savings across time.
“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.”
About FirstFuel Software
FirstFuel Software is the trusted source for energy use intelligence. FirstFuel helps customers deliver scalable energy efficiency across their building portfolios through the Remote Building Analytics platform, which uses advanced meter data analytics to identify, enable, and track energy efficiency savings behind the meter in commercial buildings - all without onsite visits or device installations. Designed to be rapidly and cost-effectively deployed across hundreds or thousands of commercial buildings, FirstFuel changes the scale at which the sector can achieve its energy efficiency goals. Founded in 2009 and privately held, FirstFuel is headquartered in Lexington, Mass. For more information, please visit www.firstfuel.com.
