Load chart notes let you annotate your building’s energy use chart with operational context. You can attach notes to the building as a whole or to individual meters, and they appear on the load chart as colored beacons at the relevant point in time. Notes created at the meter level are also displayed on the building’s usage page, so you can see all of your building’s annotations in one place.
Example Use Cases:
- Documenting Operational Events: Record HVAC maintenance, tenant events, or equipment issues directly on the load chart. When someone asks why usage spiked on a particular day, the answer is already there.
- Tracking Overnight and Weekend Anomalies: When you spot unusual off-hours usage, add a note with your findings. This creates a record that helps your team identify recurring patterns and avoid redundant investigations.
- Coordinating Across Teams: Notes are visible to all users on the account who have access to the building. Property managers, engineers, and sustainability staff can all see and contribute context about what’s happening in the building.
Viewing notes on the load chart
Notes appear on the energy use load curve chart as small colored beacons, positioned at the date and time associated with the note.
On a building’s usage page, you’ll see beacons for notes attached to the building itself as well as notes attached to any of its underlying meters. The same is true on campus pages, where beacons from all buildings and meters within the campus are displayed together.
Beacon colors
Beacon colors indicate the type of note. Green beacons are notes left by users, and red beacons are notes generated by Gridium’s automated analytics. This makes it easy to distinguish your team’s annotations from system-generated observations when scanning the chart.
Beacon positioning
Beacons always sit on a data line in the chart. When the specific data line a note is attached to is visible (for example, an individual meter line when “show meters” is turned on), the beacon appears on that line at the correct time and demand level.
When the specific line is not visible, the beacon moves to the aggregate load line that includes the note’s data source. For example, a note attached to a meter will appear on the building aggregate line when “show meters” is turned off. The beacon keeps its correct position on the time axis so you can still see when the note was placed.
Hover details
Hovering over a beacon displays a tooltip with the note’s content and the name of the building or meter the note is attached to. This makes it straightforward to identify the source of each note, particularly when you’re viewing notes from multiple meters on a single chart.
Creating a note
There are two ways to create a note: using the Add note buttons on the page, or right-clicking directly on the load curve chart.
Note: only users with a Full User role on the building can create notes. If you have a Viewer role, you can see existing notes but the controls for adding new ones will not be available.
Using the Add note button
There are two Add note buttons on the usage page: one above the load chart, and one in the header of the notes list below it. Both work the same way.
- Click either Add note button.
- You’ll be prompted to choose which data source to attach the note to. The options include the building itself and each of its individual meters.
- Select the date and time for the note. This determines where the beacon will appear on the load curve.
- Enter your note content and save.
On campus pages, the Add note buttons offer the buildings and meters within the campus as data source options.
Right-clicking on the load chart
You can also create a note by right-clicking directly on the load curve chart.
- Right-click at the point on the chart where you want to place the note.
- Select Add note from the context menu.
- The date and time will be pre-populated based on where you clicked, so you won’t need to enter them manually.
- Choose the data source to attach the note to, enter your content, and save.
This method is particularly useful when you’re investigating a specific moment on the chart and want to record your findings in context.
The notes list
Below the load curve chart, the usage page displays a list of all notes for the building. This includes notes attached to the building as well as notes from individual meters.
Notes are listed in chronological order, with each note labeled by the name of the building or meter it’s attached to. This lets you scan through the full timeline of annotations while still being able to tell where each note came from.
The notes list on campus pages works the same way, showing notes from all buildings and meters within the campus in chronological order.
