Case Study

Keeping track of consumption

Another feature is the ability to flag up those sites where bills are overdue. For the Council's finance department, it is important that expenditure is included in the correct financial year. So the Essentials system is used to print out a notice of those accounts that are overdue for billing. Every month, for example, a summary is sent to the water supplier of accounts which have not been billed for 120 days - these should be presented every 90 days.

The Council regularly sends Scottish Power letters regarding estimated readings to ensure that final bills are received on all accounts by the end of the financial year, allowing the Council to complete a reconciliation of its utility budgets.

Monitoring & Targeting systems are a powerful weapon in driving down utility bills and ensuring efficient operation of sites. Here, the ability of the Essentials suite to generate detailed reports has proved invaluable. When energy officers go to carry out audits at any of the Council's buildings, they now go armed with up to date information about energy consumption. This helps them to identify areas where improvements can be made.

"We can produce a range of reports based on a wide variety of parameters," explains George Elder. "For example, we could extract information about all schools in the north of the county. We could print out a listing of buildings whose energy consumption had risen by more than 5% on last year's total, or those currently using more energy than the Government's Good Practice guidelines suggest."

Benchmarking performance

The Council's non-domestic building stock is regularly benchmarked to Normalised Performance Indicators (NPIs). High consuming sites are targeted for improvement measures.

"We focus on high consumption rather than cost," emphasises George Elder. "This is because a large number of our buildings are electrically heated - half our secondary schools, for example. If we purely concentrated on the costs, we would spend almost all our time working on these sites."

The impact of the energy team on the Council's energy and environmental performance has been considerable. Within two years, the electricity bill has been cut from £6.2million to just £5.5 million - no mean feat. Savings are reported in terms of consumption, costs and CO2 emissions.

As the data archive builds, the energy team will be able to provide forecasts of energy consumption for the relevant Council Services. Only two years of historical data currently exists, but it is being added to every month and this will allow more detailed forecasting to be achieved as time goes on.

The Council is in the process of setting up a fund to make use of the cost savings achieved to invest in future energy savings projects. A portion of the savings made will be retained by the Services for them to spend on their own priorities, which need not be energy-related. This gives them an incentive to be energy efficient.

The Council is also setting up energy teams to encourage site operators to take more direct responsibility for saving energy. The use of the reporting capabilities of the Essentials software will help to give the energy teams the detailed information necessary to identify and carry out improvements.

Responding to customer needs

The energy scene is changing rapidly, both nationally and regionally. Suppliers need to be attentive to the voice of their customers if their services are to remain useful. Stark Software has a number of regional 'user groups' which meet regularly to discuss issues of common interest. A recent meeting of the Scottish group was held at Fife - in addition to the host authority, some 11 other Councils are members. A number of developments were discussed and are now being worked on at Stark's R&D facility. The internet billing enhancement was a result of a previous user group discussion.

A number of the users choose to purchase electricity on a 'discounted tariff' basis and, as a result of a request from the user group, Stark amended their software to accommodate this form of pricing.

Getting the most out of the system

Powerful M&T software systems can be daunting, but they need not be. A step-by-step approach can help to make the most of the opportunities. "Eighteen months ago, I thought, 'Why does this have to be so complicated?' I was surprised just how much data the system could hold," George Elder admits. "Yet I've now realised that the more data we have, the more we can understand how we are using energy and water - and what we can do to control consumption. The labour of setting up the initial database has been more than repaid by the savings we've been able to make through its use.

"We've been able to make increasing use of the sophistication of the system as time has gone on. From the initial tracking of bills and consumption across the Council's estate, we can now target specific activities with the aim of maximising savings. The recent programme of reviewing the size of water meters in every building in order to minimise standing charges is just one of the more recent examples."

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