Gridium’s email reports are a great way for building managers to get an at-a-glance summary of operationally relevant energy events — both recent and upcoming. In 2025, we are updating these reports so that they combine data from all the meters in a building. These much richer reports should be even more useful to building managers, especially those with complex metering configurations.

Report content

Load chart

The first thing you’ll see when looking at the Gridium Building report is a chart of your energy use over the preceding week. This chart contains a lot of information (although not all elements will be available every week — we only show relevant information).

Time series data

The chart includes several different types of time series:

• The thicker black line represents total energy use in your building. (Dotted sections indicate periods of time for which not all meters have reported data yet, resulting in partial totals at the building level.)
• The thinner gray lines indicate individual meters within the building. Because these meters aren’t individually labeled, they are meant simply to provide helpful context. Visit the website for detailed information on individual meters.
• The red dotted line represents outdoor air temperature.

Clicking the chart will take you to the web app where you can interactively explore the data.

Shading

The total energy use for the building usually includes blue and orange shading:

• Blue shading indicates periods when demand was below expectation.
• Orange shading indicates periods when demand was above expectation.

In both cases, expected demand is based on a statistical model of your building’s energy use that takes into account factors such as weather and time of day. Therefore, interpret the shading to mean: “At this time of day and year, given these weather conditions, your building normally uses this much energy.” The predictive model constantly adjusts to changes in your building’s operational patterns, and it places a particularly heavy weight on the most recent months.

Building energy use fluctuates constantly, so a small amount of shading likely just reflects random variation. But large or repeating variances from expectation probably indicate operational changes. For example:

• The sliver of orange shading at the start of every weekday indicates that the start time of this building has recently shifted an hour earlier. Demand is higher than the model expects at 5:30am because the building is starting earlier than before.
• The blue shading during weekday business hours indicates the building has reduced daytime energy use, even taking weather into account.

Note that the shading does not necessarily indicate a problem. Rather it indicates a change in the building’s behavior.

Beacons

The load charts often include numbered markers, or beacons, that indicate operationally relevant energy events. There are several different types of beacons. If the beacon is numbered, a corresponding footnote below the chart provides additional information.

• Billing cycle demand peak. Purple triangles indicate peak demand for the current billing cycle for a given meter. Peak demand often drives a substantial portion of energy costs.
• Demand threshold exceeded. Red triangles indicate that a meter exceeded a custom demand threshold. You can set up any number of thresholds to be alerted to anomalous demand.
• General events. Purple circles indicate automatically detected operational patterns that may warrant investigation or future action. These beacons will always have an accompanying footnote.

Data summaries

A number of optional sections appear below the load chart to provide additional information about recent and upcoming energy use in your building.

Demand peak forecast

The emails include curtailment recommendations for the upcoming week, based on an analysis of expected billing cycle demand peaks and your meters’ rate structure. The analysis knows, for example, your current demand peak for the billing cycle and the times of day that have the highest demand charges.

By synthesizing this information, it can focus your curtailment efforts on actions that will have a material impact on your energy cost:

The demand peak forecast includes a date and time window for curtailment, a recommended target demand level, and estimated savings.

Note that the weather forecast changes over the course of the week, so we recommend checking the website for the most up-to-date demand peak forecast.

Demand alerts

This table includes details of any custom demand alerts that were triggered in the previous week. You can set up demand alert policies by time of day and day of week for individual meters. Clicking an alert will take you to the website for more details.

Electric and gas use to date

For all the utility meters in your building, the email includes estimates of total energy use to date (and, where relevant, peak demand) for the current billing cycle: