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While the Green Button data standard was developed in the United States, it is now recognized globally as the energy industry's data-usage standard for securely accessing and sharing home and building energy-consumption information. The Green Button standard enables utilities to provide customers with three types of usage data:
electricity, natural gas, and water. By making customers' data available via simple and secure methods, utilities and service providers better serve their customers; meet the rapidly growing market demand for data; assure customer privacy; meet regulatory requirements; and provide data for energy-efficiency and public-purpose programs.
As those of us in the Northern hemisphere head toward the sunnier months of the year, we are reminded of the numerous benefits Green Button provides for the solar industry, including the ability to quickly obtain high
-resolution interval-meter and billing data; model and accurately assess optimum solar system size; monitor existing solar system installations for system performance; and much more.
This month we feature
Energy Toolbase
in the "Member Spotlight." In less than three years, Energy Toolbase's software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform has become a leading solution for accurately, objectively, and transparently analyzing solar and distributed energy resource (DER) projects. Read more about Energy Toolbase, below. In addition to the solar industry, Green Button data also provide highly sought-after benefits to the real-estate industry and to commercial-building managers.
Like the standard itself, the Green Button Alliance is also global and benefits many industry segments. Join us as we grow the Green Button ecosystem and bring the benefits of the industries' energy- and water-usage data standard to the worldwide market.
─Syed Mir, Chairman
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Energy Toolbase (ETB) is an industry-leading software platform for modeling and proposing the economics of solar and energy storage projects. The company's
software-as-a-service product is used by distributed energy organizations nationwide to accurately, objectively, and transparently analyze their projects. Since launching less than three years ago, Energy Toolbase has rapidly grown and now serves over a thousand companies, including residential and commercial installers, developers, energy consultants, policy organizations, and utilities.
Energy Toolbase and Green Button Data
Energy Toolbase specializes in 'utility rate' and 'avoided cost' analysis, which often begins with using a Green Button Data file to reconstruct a customer's utility bill. Having granular, interval meter data enables developers to perform the most-detailed level of analysis possible for their customer. This allows ETB users to maximize the dollar savings and payback economics for their customer.
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Energy Toolbase Demand Profile |
Many sophisticated distributed energy (DER) developers use Energy Toolbase to perform complex and layered analysis. Granular data can be leveraged for many types of advanced use-cases, like optimizing the solar or energy storage system size based on a customer's unique load profile and utility rate-switching options, determining exported energy in new Net Energy Metering (NEM 2.0) scenarios, or ethically simulating the reduction of demand charges from solar photovoltaics.
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"We are huge evangelists of the Green Button Data standard," said Adam Gerza, COO for Energy Toolbase. "Having Green Button Data is a prerequisite to accurately estimate dollar savings for many types of projects. It's imperative for the growth of distributed energy resources that utilities and stakeholders continue to adopt and advance the Green Button Data standard."
Looking Forward
The next big software update for Energy Toolbase is scheduled for May, when the company plans to release a fully revamped energy storage module. ETB is planning to unveil their new release at the California Solar Power Expo on 1-2 May in San Diego. ETB will also be hosting a training session on 2 May at 10:30am: "The New Era of DER Project Development." To learn more about Energy Toolbase, see a product demo, or sign up for a free trial, visit www.energytoolbase.com. Follow Energy Toolbase on LinkedIn, on Twitter @EnergyToolbase, and on Facebook.
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Southern California Edison (SCE) has delivered electricity to Southern and Central California for more than 125 years and is one of the nation's largest utilities. SCE was one of the first utilities in the U.S. to make Green Button data available with the launch of its Green Button program in 2013. SCE's Green Button
Download My Data
offering enables its customers to securely download their own interval usage data directly to their computer from SCE's website. In 2015, SCE launched its
Green Button
Connect My Data
program which gives customers
the ability to automate the secure transfer of their own energy usage data to authorized third-parties, based on opt-in customer consent and control.
In 2016, SCE enhanced its
Connect My Data offering to include Billing, Meter, and Program Participation related data. To date, SCE has partnered with 13 third parties with approximately 11 additional vendors in process of testing. SCE's registered third-party vendors include demand-response providers, energy-management companies, solar companies, and others. SCE is proud to be a founding member of the Green Button Alliance and continues to promote its Green Button program among its customers and their designated business agents.
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London Hydro's Customer Service Excellence Award |
Top-performing electricity utilities from across Ontario, Canada, were honored at the industry's premier Awards Gala, hosted by the Electricity Distributors Association (EDA), on 27 March 2017. London Hydro, along with Festival Hydro and Whitby Hydro, received the Customer Service Excellence award for collaborating to enhance the utilities' online customer-engagement solutions including the launch of their Green Button platforms. The utilities successfully reduced their costs while providing customers with more service options online. London Hydro was also recognized with the Conservation Leadership Award at the event.
In the headlines...
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Tech Brief | Green Button Data Format: XML
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The Green Button standard enables utility customers to easily access and share their electricity-, natural gas-, and water-usage information in a consistent format-while ensuring customer privacy and the secure transmission of information. The Green Button data format is a combination of Extensible Markup Language (XML) delivered inside the Atom Syndication Format. This combination is what enables accuracy and quality; support for complex data structures; the flexibility for future enhancements; and easy, secure streaming of information over the Internet.
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Although usage data are offered by some utilities in alternate formats - like Excel (XLS, XLSX) files, Comma Separated Values (CSV) files, or via machine-to-machine Electronic Data Exchange (EDI) - Green Button data are standardized and only in XML. Other formats are proprietary or inconsistent, do not always support complex data structures, and do not ensure privacy of customer information and security of transmission as part of their definition. If downloading data in a format other than the Green Button data format (XML), such as in an Excel or CSV format, care must be taken to remove any personally identifiable information that may be present before sharing data with others.
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| Kevin Bricknell, ComEd educating on Green Button |
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GBA members Kevin Bricknell, Mimi Zhang |
Kevin Bricknell of ComEd presented during Session 10: "Better Programs, Better Performance, with Customer and Grid Data Analytics." During the 20-minute talk, Bricknell educated the audience about new and innovative smart grid programs and pilots that are helping to create a utility of the future. He highlighted new customer programs including Green Button Connect My Data, which the utility is implementing to help its customers make informed decisions about managing their electricity consumption.
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| Anne Pramaggiore, ComEd CEO, named ETS17 Thought Leader of Year |
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Energyworx' Edwin Poot discusses data quality |
Energyworx Founder and Chief Visionary Officer, Edwin Poot, spoke on the "
Designing for Data" panel along with participants from Direct Energy and EDF Energy Services. Poot expertly addressed how the industry can get the most out of legacy systems and respond to data diversity challenges. Establishing a foundation of data quality is the key to success in advanced analytics and machine learning.
SGCC's
President and CEO, Patty Durand, moderated two panels at the event including "Customers-in-Charge - Redefining the Utility-Customer Relationship" and "
Ready for Action - How Utilities Can Drive Value for their Customer.
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GBA member,
Continental Automated Buildings Association (CABA), held the
CABA Intelligent Buildings & Digital Home Forum - the CABA Forum - 26-28 April, in Santa Clara, California. Speakers from Google, Honeywell, Intel, and Lucid joined the
line-up and
smart-building tours included visits to Google, Intel, CBRE, PARC - a Xerox company, and more.
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Kind regards,
Barry Haaser, Executive Director
Jeremy J. Roberts, General Manager
Donald F. Coffin, Technical Manager
Valdis Hellevik, PR Manager
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