Simplify budget season with an accurate electricity budget based on how your building actually uses energy, optionally modify certain assumptions for fine-tuning, and download into Excel with a click.
A straightline budget is the shortest path to a bad budget. Snapmeter runs a Monte Carlo simulation of your meter’s response to 10,000 different historical weather simulations and pairs the median response curve with the 10-year average weather for your location.
Modifiable assumptions for annual changes to rate, use, and 3rd power power cost are available at the Meter level and are saved when you click the blue checkmark box. Each constituent meter’s annual estimates are summarized in any associated Building or Group forecast.
Input your own annual estimates
The ability to make refinements to your meter’s forecast assumptions can be super helpful to the accuracy of your budget, depending on a few things.
Check the Bills tab to see whether or not Snapmeter is capturing all of your transmission & distribution and generation charges. If Snapmeter only shows the T&D portion of your bills, add your 3rd-party power cost. Typically this is only the case for some Direct Access customers: most utility and CCA generation charges are already included in the analytics.
Do you expect some energy-intensive equipment to be installed in or removed from the building? If you expect an occupancy change greater than 10%–in either direction–fill out the Occupancy info on your Building info tab and request our help with a detailed Occupancy study:
–Rate: Each utility treats next year’s rates a little differently, and this estimate input lets your budget stay flexible.
–Use: Say a solar array will be installed, some energy efficiency investments will start delivering, or you feel like padding the forecast with a little margin.
–3rd-party power cost: Check the Bills tab to see if Snapmeter is tracking all T&D and generation charges. If not, enter your generation cost here.
Download for safekeeping and scenario planning
Snapmeter’s understanding of how your meter uses energy is always evolving, with each additional interval meter reading adding a new piece of data to the algorithm. Once you’re happy with the annual estimates inputs, click the blue checkmark box and then download an Excel copy for your records.
Let’s say you expect a rate change to come into effect in six months, but you don’t want those first six months to reflect the higher, future rate. The Download feature is here for the rescue! Run two different scenarios, download both into Excel (one with and one without the rate increase), and combine.
88% of Excel files have errors: a quick sanity check can go a long way. Compare your final budget to your trailing twelve month spend. Spotting an unexpected gap here can help identify billing errors or missing bills or other issues.