Unclogging the Bottleneck for a Company that Prizes Speed

Dan Rosenberg had the same problem many of you have. He needed utility data faster. 

Requests that used to take a week to come through were taking closer to a month. And often, only a fraction of the data would come in. Then his team would submit another request. And the whole month-long wait would start again. It was ridiculous. Or, as Dan Rosenberg put it more delicately, it was "a bottleneck for our development process." 

For TerraVerde Energy, a company who builds their business on data analytics, the delays were also project-killers. But their partnership with UtilityAPI changed all that.

Saving money and the planet through energy efficiency
TerraVerde helps public schools and other agencies save energy and money. They construct advanced analytics and financial models to determine which solar and storage projects will best achieve those goals. 

In order to do their work, they need access to a client’s billing history and interval data by meter. When the data request process got bogged down, TerraVerde looked for a better solution. They found it with UtilityAPI. 

Three weeks or less than one hour: which would you prefer to wait?
When TerraVerde integrated with UtilityAPI, their data retrieval wait time dropped from three+ weeks to less than an hour. Now, once a client has authorized data sharing, they can compile anywhere from one to three years worth of billing and interval data nearly instantly.

It’s high quality data, too. The data itself is in “a much more usable format than what the utility itself would send us,” says Rosenberg. Although TerraVerde installs consumption meters at every site, there are hiccups. “They [consumption meters] are unreliable; sometimes there are a few months before they are installed or there may be gaps in the data, so to have those bills that have what the utilities are actually measuring is just more valuable.” UtilityAPI’s data is more valuable.

Automatic data refreshes make measuring impact easy
Automated data has further smoothed the entire process. TerraVerde takes advantage of UtilityAPI’s automatic data refreshes to measure the impact of a new system. They also compile an annual savings report for solar and storage projects using interval data.
 
What stands out for Rosenberg is how easy the process was.  He collected 95% of the utility data he needed to create an annual report for a school’s July - June cycle “by running 100 lines of code for 10 minutes.” TerraVerde’s analysts simply direct UtilityAPI to update the meter data. Downloads happen automatically. 

Next up:  seamless, integrated data sweetens the deal
Because it’s so efficient, TerraVerde has been tweaking their software to rely on UtilityAPI as the primary data source. They‘re also integrating their clients’ solar monitoring systems with UtilityAPI. This way, they can calculate savings for these large scale projects automatically, then offer it on demand to their clients.

Get rid of deal-killing delays

Delays are project-killers. But thanks to UtilityAPI, TerraVerde Energy has come a long way from having one person contact a utility rep, list 100 meters, and wait 3 weeks. ​You can, too! Get a free demo to see how much time we can save you.