Gridium generates a budget forecast for every meter in your portfolio. You can fine-tune it by downloading a spreadsheet version and adjusting for anticipated changes in energy use or utility rates.
Base forecast
The starting point for your budget is a set of base forecasts for every meter in your portfolio. The base forecast predicts future use based on past use, then multiplies the predicted use by historical rates to derive monthly budget figures.
The base forecast uses whatever historical data is available. Even when a meter has a short billing history, Gridium extrapolates that history forward, though shorter histories may lead to reduced forecast accuracy.
In most cases, Gridium has an extensive history of bill and interval data to draw from. A more complete data set allows adjustments for unusual weather, long-term trends, outlier correction, data gap filling, and other forms of cleanup to derive a more reliable budget forecast.
Even with high-quality data, forecasting is imperfect. A large change in occupancy, for example, could affect your ongoing costs in ways that are hard to foresee.
To help you review your budget for accuracy, Gridium provides information about the quality of the input data used to generate the budgets. We strongly recommend reviewing this information and making any necessary adjustments.
Budget adjustments
Anticipated use changes
You may be aware of upcoming operational changes — such as a large tenant moving in or a capital upgrade project — that are likely to affect your energy use.
You can incorporate these anticipated changes into your budget:
- Download the spreadsheet version of the budget by clicking the Download button on the budget forecast page.
- Open the spreadsheet and navigate to the Expected Use Change worksheet. This worksheet contains a row for each meter in the budget and a column for each month.
- For any month in which you expect use to differ from Gridium’s base forecast, enter the expected percent change.
For example, if you expect an increase in occupancy in August will drive a 6% increase in energy use, enter a value of 6% in the corresponding cell. A value of zero indicates no change from Gridium’s base forecast. A negative value indicates a drop from the base forecast.
Changes are cumulative over time. In this example, the 6% increase in August will also affect September and every month after. If you expect the increase to be temporary, enter a corresponding decrease in a future month.
Anticipated rate changes
Utilities typically update their rates at least once per year, and often several times per year. Gridium maintains a database of anticipated utility rate changes and automatically applies them to your budget forecast. You can substitute your own rate change factors in the downloadable version.
The steps are nearly identical to entering use changes:
- Download the spreadsheet version of the budget by clicking the Download button on the budget forecast page.
- Open the spreadsheet and navigate to the Expected Rate Change worksheet. This worksheet contains a row for each meter in the budget and a column for each month.
- For any month in which you expect rates to change, enter the expected percent change. A value of zero indicates no change from Gridium’s base forecast.
Gridium provides default rate change factors, which you are free to modify. Like use changes, rate changes are cumulative: a rate change in one month affects all following months.
The ability to add your own rate change factors is mainly useful if you contract for third-party supply and have advance knowledge of upcoming price changes. Unless this describes your situation, you may find it easier to use Gridium’s default rate change figures.
Download format
The downloadable version of the budget forecast contains a set of factors that are combined to create a budget:
- Baseline monthly use
- Baseline monthly rate
- Anticipated changes in use
- Anticipated changes in rates
By adjusting the anticipated use and rates, you can fine-tune the budget to best reflect your expected future costs. Each worksheet is described below.
Overview
This worksheet contains instructions for using the budget download and a list of data issues to consider when assessing the budget output. Data issues do not necessarily indicate a problem with the generated budget; they represent situations worth reviewing.
Possible messages include:
- “We were unable to generate a forecast for this meter.” In cases where meters have extremely limited historical data, Gridium may be unable to generate a forecast.
- “Baseline is missing billing data for X days out of 365.” Gridium doesn’t have a full year of billing data to use as the basis for a forecast. This isn’t necessarily a problem, but you may want to review the output for the meter in question.
- “Most recent billing data is X days old.” Significant lags in the billing data used to generate a forecast. Older data may not reflect recent operational changes in your building.
- “Baseline includes unusually high or low bills.” Your recent billing history includes outliers. Gridium typically suppresses outliers when generating a budget forecast, but it is difficult to know for certain whether outliers represent one-time events or are likely to recur.
- “Baseline includes bills with negative cost and/or use.” Negative values on bills usually represent either bill adjustments or net energy metering. In either case, these charges tend to be unpredictable and hard to forecast accurately.
Budget Forecast
This worksheet contains the final budget numbers, broken down by meter and calendar month. We don’t recommend modifying the formulas in this sheet, as doing so could cause errors in your budget calculations. Instead, modify the inputs on other sheets.
Use Forecast
A forecast of use, broken down by meter and calendar month. This data is purely informational; it lets you see how future energy use will compare to past energy use.
Expected Use Change
This worksheet allows you to capture any anticipated changes to operational energy use. See the “Anticipated use changes” section above for detailed instructions.
Utility Rate Change Forecast
This worksheet allows you to capture anticipated utility rate changes. See the “Anticipated rate changes” section above for detailed instructions.
Year-On-Year Cost Change
Compares the budget forecast to your historical costs to help you understand how costs are expected to change. These figures are useful for budget validation; review them to make sure the budget matches your common-sense expectation for next year’s costs. If you see anything unexpected, you may want to adjust the budget inputs.
Year-On-Year Use Change
Compares the use forecast to your historical use to help you understand how use is expected to change. This comparison is useful for validating the budget forecast.
Baseline Cost
Baseline cost figures are provided for comparison purposes. They are used to derive the percentages in the Year-On-Year Cost Change worksheet.
The baseline cost is not simply a chronological history of your utility bills. The budget forecast extends more than twelve months into the future; the baseline represents the most recently available twelve months of historical bills, rearranged so that they line up with the budget forecast by calendar month. Gridium also fills in any gaps in the historical baseline to the extent possible.
Baseline Use
Baseline use figures are provided for comparison purposes. They are used to derive the percentages in the Year-On-Year Use Change worksheet. As with the baseline cost figures, the baseline use numbers represent a constructed baseline in which each forecast month is paired with the most recent relevant historical baseline data.