International Analytics Program Earns Federal Energy and Water Management Award

Cars get tune-ups to ensure they are operating optimally. But did you know buildings can get "tuned-up" too? To make sure a building is operating optimally-meeting its energy requirements in the most efficient way possible-someone needs to analyze its energy usage and affiliated costs.

That's where people like Jenna Faupel step in-except her responsibility for optimizing energy usage is not limited to just one building. As an energy manager inside the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations, she analyzes the energy efficiency of 244 overseas embassies and consulates, managing data reported in 130 foreign currencies and 44 languages.

Managing the volume and complexity of this data was a thrilling opportunity for Faupel when the bureau launched its Utility Analytics Program (UAP) in 2019. As a founding member of the program, Faupel was eager to apply the data-driven problem-solving skills she had cultivated over the years as a mechanical engineer.

By fall 2022, she and her teammate Cynthia Bensburg had fully implemented data mapping of utility bills for automated data capture and use across all Department of State overseas locations, using a centralized utility analytics software called EnergyCAP. Replacing a manual data entry process with an automated system not only streamlined data collection but also provided data insights that sparked discussions on future improvements.

This achievement earned the UAP a 2023 Federal Energy and Water Management Award (FEWMA) from the Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP). FEMP's annual FEWMA recognizes individuals and organizations for their significant contributions to energy and water efficiency within the federal government.

"To me, the most environmentally friendly, lowest-carbon-emissions type of energy is the energy that's not used," said Faupel, explaining why improving a building's energy efficiency is her top priority. "I believe that there is so much low-hanging fruit, letting me identify what can be done better with what we have."

Inside the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations, finding the low-hanging fruit among 40,000 annual transactions that use 1,200 unique rate structures used to be more like finding needles in a haystack. The bureau's previous data collection practices involved manual data entry that only included a building's energy use and cost. It did not include any of the granular information found in different rate structures.

"Whether you're using time-of-use or block rate structure or demand structure, that really defines how you're being billed," Faupel said.

With the creation of the UAP came the opportunity to finally capture missing data and, ultimately, get a more accurate understanding of how well buildings were operating. "Having the ability to have them all in one central location so that we could do a comprehensive analysis of our entire building portfolio was really what the program was designed to do," said Faupel.

Faupel's previous experience as an energy manager for Fairfax County, Virigina, involved using software programs capable of advanced data collection. After evaluating options for the UAP, she selected EnergyCAP as the most suitable solution. This decision enabled the UAP team to focus more on analysis and easily identify trends.

One trend they discovered was a billing practice of utilities, which were charging for minimum billed demand-the potential amount of electricity a building could access instantaneously (kilowatts)-instead of, or in addition to, a building's actual peak demand. When actual demand is below this minimum billed demand, making adjustments to align the charges with actual demand can add up to significant cost avoidance.

Demand (kilowatt) is different than what most people are familiar with, which is consumption (kilowatt-hours). "Think of [kilowatts] as the capacity of the [grid] system to be able to deliver a certain amount of power that you're looking for at any given moment," Faupel said. "If you turned on every single light in your house at the exact same moment, there would be a surge in the capacity required. Some places will bill you for the privilege of having access to that capacity."

When a new embassy or consulate is first built, the use of very large equipment means demand could be quite high when estimated based on equipment sizes. But over time, actual demand trends can reveal that initial, high-kilowatt capacity is not needed.

"After a year of using this [EnergyCAP] program, you have enough operational data, and you realize we don't need access to this much capacity. So, we pick up the phone, call the utility vendor, and ask them to reset the number," Faupel said. "To date we have helped about 15 posts realize $1.8 million collectively in cost avoidance. No change to operations; this is just straight cost avoidance."

Early Stages of Success Are Award-Worthy

The phased EnergyCAP rollout involved two years of painstaking attention to detail to cross-check the accuracy of the software outputs. "In order to have confidence in this automated process, you need to review what's being brought in initially to make sure that future iterations come in correctly. It was a lengthy process of quality control and looking at each and every bill-in different languages and different currencies."

Thankfully, Faupel was not alone. "I was very fortunate to have had Cynthia Bensberg join the team. She's been a fantastic asset, and she helped me complete all of those enrollments, which is the basis of the FEWMA award, getting all [244] locations fully enrolled in the program."

When Faupel heard her team had won the FEWMA in 2023, she was pleasantly surprised, because the program had only just begun to reap benefits. And like many achievements that happen in the virtual world, Faupel noted, "you can't take a flashy picture of this" to easily impress people.

And Faupel was particularly excited at the chance to impress her toughest audience-her kids-when her picture landed on the big screen at the FEWMA awards ceremony. "I was a little bit blown away by it, but thankfully I reacted quick enough to take a picture and send it to my children. How often, as a parent, do you get to actually impress your children by having your face up on three jumbo screens?"

Faupel encourages folks to nominate their peers for awards like the FEWMA that allow teams to articulate their achievements in a way that's meaningful to others outside their field. "Sometimes just having that extra pat on the back is enough to keep you going when you feel like you've been trudging through," she said. "They're not the flashy things that everybody likes to recognize, but when you're working on some of that behind-the-scenes work, it's very nice to get recognized for that."