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Provide Automated Benchmarking Services

Through ENERGY STAR, energy service companies can provide their customers with EPA’s energy performance rating scale so customers can receive building energy ratings automatically within commercial energy information products. EPA’s rating scale gives organizations an easy and standardized way to understand and compare their building energy use. The rating scale has been used to evaluate tens of thousands of buildings. Today, thousands of buildings have earned the ENERGY STAR.

Initially, this activity was only accomplished using EPA’s online web tracking tool, Portfolio Manager. With the addition of automated benchmarking, energy service companies can automatically load and update their customers' energy data, and provide their customers with a standardized building energy performance rating of 1–100. This saves their customers the time spent manually inputting energy and building data into Portfolio Manager.

By incorporating the EPA’s energy performance ratings into your energy services you can:

  • Provide customers with objective, standardized assessments of their building energy performance.
  • Tap into the ENERGY STAR program to motivate customers to adopt continuous energy management programs, reduce their carbon footprint, save energy and validate savings.
  • Help thousands of ENERGY STAR partners achieve their energy reduction goals in individual buildings or across their portfolio of buildings, and help them earn ENERGY STAR recognition for their accomplishments.
  • Reduce the burden of ENERGY STAR partners interested in continuous energy management, but unable to manually input monthly energy data into Portfolio Manager.

2013 Portfolio Manager and ABS Redesign: In the Spring of 2013, EPA will release a completely new and redesigned upgrade for its popular Portfolio Manager tool and the ABS system. This upgrade will expand the database to meet expected growth and will greatly enhance features offered within the online tool and via ABS. Because this upgraded ABS system will employ a new software platform (RESTful web services), EPA is providing a demonstration service. The demonstration will help to prepare ABS providers for the system upgrade, by providing a more concrete example of the types of services that will be employed in the upgraded system. View our progress on the upgrade and test the demonstration web services.

NOTE TO ABS PROVIDERS: Beta Data Exchange Web Services Are Now Live!
The completely redesigned and upgraded data exchange web services are available for testing as of September 26, 2012. These will replace the legacy Automated Benchmarking System web services, which will be discontinued upon the release of the new Portfolio Manager in June of 2013. Please prepare to begin integration and testing with the new data exchange web services, so that you will be ready to continue exchanging data and metrics for your customers after June of 2013. The API and system documentation are available at: http://portfoliomanager.energystar.gov/webservices.

As an ABS provider that is actively using EPA’s web services to support customer benchmarking activities, EPA encourages you to take the next step and become an ENERGY STAR Service and Product Provider Partner. Becoming an ENERGY STAR Partner enhances your credibility and visibility in the marketplace by linking your service offerings to the trusted ENERGY STAR brand. Organizations partnering with ENERGY STAR have access to the ENERGY STAR Partner logo, are listed online in the ENERGY STAR “Expert Help” directory, and have the opportunity to participate in recognition opportunities for themselves and their clients. Learn more about the partnership process and to begin an application.

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