It’s the end of the year. You’re working hard to get everything ready to go for next year. And we’re here to make it a little easier for you.

With the Aquicore platform, property managers and engineers can easily set monthly targets for utility consumption and spend, keeping teams aligned and accountable. Throughout the month, Aquicore's real-time monitoring makes it easy to track actuals against budget and make adjustments that can help you avoid unexpectedly high utility bills.

Filling in these settings will enhance how you see Energy Insights and Dashboard features to understand how your building is tracking.

We recommend that you start with the budgets tool, something you probably planned out earlier this fall.

Adding your budget will allow you to:

• Add a budget widget to your dashboard to view your progress.
• View your budget performance on your monthly portfolio reports.
• Identify daily/monthly budget trends in Energy Insights.

Next, use the targets tool which will help you strategize to find new savings opportunities.

Adding your targets will allow you to:

• Add the target widgets on your dashboard to view your progress.
• View your building performance on your monthly portfolio reports.
• Identify daily/monthly usage trends in Energy Insights.

You can select from one of the target types: peak demand, baseload and consumption. If you want a little help from the platform, you can check the box that says recommend targets for me.

Peak demand: An important part of your utility bill is the demand charge, which depending on the peaks your building hits, can be a big percentage of your total cost. By setting up a peak demand target in the Aquicore platform, you can see how close your building is to going over a demand level that will seriously cost you. You can also set goals for your property that will help you stay on track to shave your peaks as you make adjustments.

We recommend you look at Optimization to see what your current peaks are, and your current charges through Energy Insights and previous utility bills. Checking these out can help you calculate what kW to set as your target for each month.

Baseload: By setting up a baseload target in the Aquicore platform, you can track how your building is running outside of lease hours, when your equipment should be powering down.

You can examine your baseload in Optimization to see what levels your building regularly reaches during those off-hours. A number of customers we’ve worked with have discovered issues with BMS settings that have kept equipment on later than necessary, or schedules that need to be updated.

Consumption: By setting up a Consumption Target in the Aquicore platform, you can see how the total energy usage in your building is tracking through each month. If you see that you’ve used over half of your consumption target only 8 days into the month, you can make changes in real-time rather than finding out when you get a higher than normal utility bill (aka when it’s too late).

We recommend you look at your historical consumption levels in Energy Insights. Checking these out can help you calculate what kWh to set as your target for each month.

Now that you’ve got your budget and targets set up, you’ll be able to see how your building is tracking against key Energy Insights month to month and make 2019 the year of your most savings yet!