Improvements to Portfolio Manager planned for March 21, 2011

Monday, February 28, 2011 - 23:00

New Senior Care Facility Model

Effective March 21, 2011, a new rating will be available for Senior Care facilities, and those facilities scoring 75 or higher will be eligible to apply for the ENERGY STAR label. This rating methodology will be used for individual buildings and campuses of buildings that house and provide care and assistance for elderly residents. Nursing homes (skilled nursing facilities) and assisted living facilities are eligible under this definition. Independent senior living communities are not eligible under this definition. However, it is common for some Senior Care Facilities to offer a mix of residential options including independent living along with some form of assisted living. In these situations, more than 50% of the units in a community must be considered skilled nursing or assisted living in order to be eligible as a Senior Care Facility. Facilities with more than 50% independent living units cannot earn a rating under this model and should benchmark using the Multifamily space type in Portfolio Manager.

Requirements
In order to compute the new rating, you will be required to enter 12 consecutive months of measured energy use for all fuel types and the following 12 operational parameters:
  • Gross floor area
  • Total Number of Units
  • Average Number of Residents
  • Total Resident Capacity
  • Workers on Main Shift
  • Number of PCs owned by the community (does not include PCs owned by residents)
  • Number of Commercial Refrigeration/Freezer Units
  • Number of Commercial Washing Machines
  • Number of Residential Washing Machines
  • Number of Residential Electronic Lift Systems
  • Percent of the Gross Floor Area that is Heated
  • Percent of the Gross Floor Area that is Cooled
When the updates are released on March 21, 2011, existing “Other- Health Care: Long Term Care (Nursing Home, Assisted Living)” spaces will be converted automatically to the new Senior Care Facility space type. Default values will be provided for all required attributes, which will enable you to see a rating. Please log-in to Portfolio Manager on or after March 21, 2011 to update these defaults with actual values for your community to receive the most accurate rating. 
New Optional Inputs for the Data Center Space Type
Two new optional IT Energy meter types will be available in Portfolio Manager. The meter types are optional and therefore will not affect the ENERGY STAR rating calculation. The two new types are:
  • Power Distribution Unit (PDU) Output Energy
  • IT Equipment Input Energy (meters on each piece of equipment
Updates to Renewable Energy Certificate (REC) and Green Power Tracking
Several changes will be made to the Renewable Energy Certificate (REC) tracking section in Portfolio Manager. This section will be re-named Green Power Purchases, and it will enable greater flexibility for tracking green power products that you may purchase as part of your greenhouse gas reduction strategy. When entering these purchases, you will have greater flexibility, including:
  • The option to input the Generation Method as a combination of six renewable energy types:
    • Biogas
    • Biomass
    • Geothermal
    • Small Hydropower
    • Solar
    • Wind
  • Three options to identify the location where your green power product was generated. The more information you know about the location where your power was generated, the more accurately Portfolio Manager can compute your Avoided Emissions. The three options for entering the generation location are:
    • Specific electricity generation plant
    • Unknown generation plant but known eGRID sub-region
    • No information about the location available
  • The ability to specify the Generation Period in month/year format, including future dates, to more accurately represent the Green Power Purchase time period.
Revised Source Conversion Factors for District Steam and Hot Water Energy Types
The factors used to convert site energy into source energy will be updated for the District Steam and Hot Water energy types in order to take into account the growing presence of more efficient methods of generation, such as combined heat and power (CHP). The new conversion factors that will be used starting March 21, 2011 are:
  • District Steam- 1.21
  • District Hot Water- 1.28
More information about converting to source energy, including the current conversion factors, can be found at: http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=evaluate_performance.bus_benchmark_comm_bldgs. The technical documentation of the calculation behind these factors will be posted on this website on March 21, 2011.
New and Revised Building Import Templates
A new template for the Senior Care Facility space type will be available for download. We encourage you to begin to gather data on your Senior Care Facilities so that you can benchmark their performance with the new ENERGY STAR rating methodology. However, because the new calculations will not be released to Portfolio Manager until March 21, 2011, any Senior Care Facility templates sent to buildings@energystar.gov will be processed after March 21, 2011.
Effective March 4, 2011
To accommodate the changes in the Portfolio Manager system, all existing import templates must also be revised. There is a transition period during which new templates will be posted and the previous templates will be removed.
  • New Templates – New templates will be posted for download on March 4, 2011. The electronic processing of any new templates will begin on March 21, 2011.
  • Old Templates – The previous templates will be removed on March 4, 2011. Any completed versions of the previous template must be submitted by March 14, 2011 in order to be processed electronically.
The new import templates will have the following changes:
  • Addition of the new optional Data Center IT Energy meter types to the following templates: Bank; Courthouse; Data Center; Dormitory; Hospital; Hotel; Medical; Office; Other; Refrigerated Warehouse; Retail; School; Supermarket; Unrefrigerated Warehouse; Worship
  • Removal of the “Healthcare- Long Term Care (Nursing Home; Assisted Living)” category from the Other template
 
Updates to the Automated Benchmarking Services Console
Two major changes will be made to the Automated Benchmarking Services Console:
  1. New Meter Types – The Automated Benchmarking Services Console will now enable Portfolio Manager users to authorize their information service providers to support these additional meter types:
    • Facility water meters
    • Campus energy meters
    • Campus water meters
Please note that ABS providers will be only be able to manage meter data to existing campus energy/water meters. ABS providers will not be able to add new or delete existing campus energy/water meters.
  1. Multiple ABS Providers – The ABS console will now enable you to assign more than one ABS provider to each meter. Only a single ABS provider will be able to update the meter data (i.e. have read/write access), however you can also designate as many other providers as you would like to have read only access to each meter.
Update to Emissions Factors
EPA is in the process of updating the eGRID factors that are used to compute building emissions. The update is being performed to include the most current information available to EPA through our inventory of all electric generation facilities in the country. This enhancement will improve your ability to perform an emissions inventory of your building(s).
During this update, emissions data will be temporarily unavailable in Portfolio Manager from 1/31/2011 to 3/21/2011. EPA updates emissions data periodically when more current data is available and this process does not typically require a break in emissions reporting within Portfolio Manager. However, during this particular update, EPA is also modifying some supplementary reference data, which comes from an external proprietary data source. The availability of this data has affected the timing required to make this change. Therefore the interruption in our ability to report emissions data is an isolated event, and it not part of our standard updating protocol. We are working hard to transition to the new data source as quickly as possible. Emissions reporting will resume in Portfolio Manager on March 21, 2011.
 
If you have any questions about these changes, please contact buildings@energystar.gov.

Improvements to Portfolio Manager planned for March 21, 2011