Big data analytics have shown great value for financial and ecommerce industries. However, utilities may be in the best position when it comes to leveraging big data analytics to find commercial and industrial prospects with the best potential for energy savings.
The US spent about $400 billion on energy for its Commercial and Industrial (C&I) buildings last year. In fact, buildings account for about 50 percent of the country’s energy use, according to the US Department of Energy. The challenge, according to a recent white paper from Retroficiency, is that much of the low hanging fruit in C&I energy saving has been ‘picked.’ Yet, with federal and state mandates for increasing energy efficiency, utilities must go deeper into the C&I customer base for energy savings.
The other significant problem is if every energy auditor worked around the clock it would take 22 years to analyze all commercial and industrial buildings in the US. The good news is utilities have a lot of data at their disposal such as energy consumption, building size, activity, etc. When properly collected and analyzed this data can help utilities identify the 30% of the building with 70% of the energy saving potential.
Using analytics, utilities can also determine the retrofit or operational energy conservation opportunities that will have the greatest impact before they ever speak with a customer or enter a building.
In essence big data analytics can make a massive challenge much easier to solve both in terms of finding commercial and industrial customers with the best potential for energy savings, and the best messaging to engage these prospects. To learn more about how to hyper target commercial customers with energy efficiency download this white paper from the Energy Efficiency Markets White Paper Library.
