by Shane Henson — November 8, 2013—FirstFuel Software’s Remote Building Analytics (RBA) platform has been chosen by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) to help drive comprehensive efficiency savings and meet key energy reduction targets across the entire U.S. building portfolio, the company recently announced.
According to the company, its Remote Building Analytics platform enables end-to-end commercial efficiency from opportunity identification and customer engagement through individual savings realization and ongoing tracking.
Last year, the U.S. Department of Defense selected FirstFuel’s platform across its building portfolio. This new announcement makes FirstFuel an energy analytics provider of choice for the two largest property owners in the United States, FirstFuel notes.
The full-scale FirstFuel deployment across GSA’s entire portfolio of covered facilities also follows last year’s 26-building pilot program. The initial program uncovered $6.5 million in energy savings potential across the buildings, some of which were missed by previous on-site energy audits, says FirstFuel. Approximately half of savings opportunities identified were operational in nature, enabling GSA facilities and energy managers to implement efficiency improvements at little or no cost—typically without the need for time-intensive upgrades or on-site work.
“Finding unique, cost-effective, and potentially transformative ways to better manage our energy use has been a significant priority for the GSA in recent years,” said Dr. Dorothy Robyn, public buildings service commissioner for the GSA. “We have made significant advances to improve efficiency on many fronts, and FirstFuel’s solution and progress to date provides a great example of such an advance.”
Over the next four years, FirstFuel will conduct remote audits for up to 300 covered facilities in the GSA building portfolio, the equivalent of nearly 20 percent of total office space in Manhattan. In addition, the GSA will utilize FirstFuel’s post-installation remote monitoring solution, which enables GSA managers to track the impact of their efficiency actions over time through the FirstFuel Web portal.
The deployment expands the scope of the initial pilot program by nearly 15 times. Through the expanded deployment, FirstFuel has now identified more than $14 million in energy savings across 90 remote audits and 47 million square feet of GSA real estate, the company says.
