 Faster, easier data helped ARC Alternatives do their Deep Energy Efficiency Study of the SJSU Chiller If it’s not fast, it’s dead on arrival.
ARC Alternatives, a small San Francisco-based consulting company, wins contracts when they can analyze and deliver results quickly. Once they started using UtilityAPI, they were able to deliver those results more than 10x faster. ARC is a collective of engineers and project managers. Their clients include public sector organizations, large institutions, and school districts in California. ARC figures out how those clients can save both energy and money. ARC’s clients want the same fast, data-based answers that your customers do. How much will a proposed improvement cost? How much energy will they save? Is there a better way? Before they found UtilityAPI, gathering data was often the hardest part of their workflow. ARC’s clients have many utility meters, many with limited or missing histories. In order to compile historical energy usage data, they had to work with local utilities to get their clients’ records. Once those utilities granted them access, they then had to track down the relevant historical data within the accounts. The process could take weeks, depending on if/when the utility got around to responding. In short, the stuff of nightmares. We know many of you share this pain. Once ARC partnered with UtilityAPI, that particular pain disappeared. UtilityAPI now makes energy data available with one simple authorization. What used to take weeks now takes less than 24 hours. Sometimes, it only takes five minutes. “UtilityAPI has modernized the method of retrieving historical utility data,” says Simon Olivieri, an ARC Alternatives engineer. This ultra-fast access helped ARC streamline their process. And it made them hungry for more data. Now that ongoing data updates have strengthened their client relationships, ARC uses UtilityAPI for automated regular updates of usage data, which we call ‘ongoing monitoring’ as well. The future belongs to the fast. Thanks to UtilityAPI, ARC Alternatives can take their shot at leading the pack.  You can go from clicking on the sign up link on UtilityAPI’s website to requesting your customers’ utility data in about a minute. Here’s your step-by-step guide to registering with UtilityAPI.
When you click on the sign up button, in the top right corner of UtilityAPI.com, the website will take you to our registration page. You’ll enter your name, your company email, and a password. Next you’ll pick how you want to pay. ‘Pay-as-you-go’ is the default option. You’ll pay absolutely nothing to request that your customer share data with you. Requests to share data are free. After your customer authorizes your request, you’ll pay $15 per meter for past “historical” data from a customer’s meter. If you want a discount (who doesn’t want a discount?), you can pre-pay a lump sum to your account. The more you pre-pay, the bigger your discount. As you use UtilityAPI services, we’ll subtract the charges from your account balance. You can find all of our prices here. Your pre-paid lump sum will automatically refill when it runs out unless you choose to turn off that feature. If you turn off auto-refill, you will not be able to pull data until you have enough money in your account to pay for that data. Still have questions? No problem — just contact us. We’re sticklers for privacy and consent. Data belongs to the customer who generated it. We won’t pull your customer’s data until that customer explicitly authorizes it. You’ll find all this and more written in legal language in our Data Services Agreement, which you’ll need to agree to if you want to do business with UtilityAPI. Then, hit ‘Register’ and you’re done. Welcome! Now you can start requesting data. Remember, data requests are free! Next week, we’ll walk you through how to request data. But you don’t have to wait! We explain data requests here. Want to communicate with an actual human being about this? Get a demo of how we work? Sure — just contact us. But shouldn’t utility data be free, easy, secure and accurate for everybody, everywhere? Your dream utility data: accurate, secure, free, and available when you want it. And the kicker: easy.
Some of you are already living the dream with Silicon Valley Clean Energy and UtilityAPI’s joint pilot, the Data Hive. 50 solution providers have already jumped at the chance to sign up for their free data. [You can too. Sign up here.] In Greentech Media’s April 13th piece, UtilityAPI’s CEO, Devin Hampton, shared that any utility can easily use our software. This software blazes a trail toward the cooperative, decarbonized future that the Obama administration’s Green Button initiative imagined. “We built this software to be drop-in software; any CCA, IOU, muni, co-op, should be able to implement it with a minimal setup,” he said. “It should be seamless, no matter what the system is.” GTM described the simplicity of the Data Hive’s sharing process. “With a few clicks, SVCE customers can authorize one of these companies to obtain and analyze their historical and ongoing 15-minute smart meter interval energy usage data.” No account numbers needed. No customer passwords (though your customer needs to authorize data sharing). And perhaps best of all, no waiting. Read time: 2 minutes
UtilityAPI just joined forces with Silicon Valley Clean Energy to jump into the future of clean energy. UtilityAPI took our existing mission — fast, easy access to utility data — and added a certain four letter word: F-R-E-E. Now, thanks to SVCE’s Data Hive, you all have one less thing to worry about when starting a new clean energy project. Previously, as many of you already know, getting a quote for going solar, installing an electric vehicle charger or making an energy efficiency upgrade frustrated providers and customers alike. In order to accurately quote the project, providers needed energy data. However, if/when the required data did arrive, it was often incomplete, old, or in an unusable format. SVCE and UtilityAPI have banished that irritating experience with their flagship pilot, SVCE’s Data Hive. Here’s how it works: solution providers simply register with SVCE to be listed in their Data Hive directory. The process is simple. It takes only a couple of minutes. So far, about three dozen clean energy providers have jumped at the chance to register. [You can register, too!] Once listed, providers can request data from their prospective customers in the SVCE service area. The customers will simply have to authorize their data to be shared. They will no longer have to provide their username and password with the utility. The SVCE Data Hive will provide instant, authorized, secure and FREE access to the customer’s standardized energy data. To be clear, this is the exact same high quality data you used to have to pay UtilityAPI to get. Only now, it’s free, thanks to SVCE’s innovative leadership in clean energy projects. Welcome to the future. Which utility is next? We know but we can’t say… yet. Stay tuned. |
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May 2020
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