EnergyCAP Version 7.8 now available—includes ENERGY STAR and bill entry features

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

EnergyCAP’s latest update, Version 7.8, is now live in your EnergyCAP database. This release includes updates to several heavily used EnergyCAP features. An update was also made to EnergyCAP Version 3 which removes several features now available in EnergyCAP Version 7. The full release notes for this upgrade are available.

• Meter units—Each meter can now be configured with the specific units to be used for calculating and charting meter use and demand. This enhancement eliminates issues related to mixed units of measure—bills will be recorded and reported accurately, even if a vendor changes its billing units over the lifetime of a meter.

• Bill formats—The ability to easily customize and save bill formats during the manual bill entry process replaces the need to maintain and assign bill entry templates. This new process is intuitive and easy-to-use. If you change the line items on a bill or update captions while saving a bill, we’ll ask whether or not you want to save your bill format changes and walk you through the process of making updates to other accounts and meters.

• ENERGY STAR—EnergyCAP’s ENERGY STAR features have been redesigned from the ground-up based on customer feedback and suggestions from the EPA. You can now send EnergyCAP billing data to an existing Portfolio Manager^® account, retrieve scores and metrics for any months, and easily track and highlight building performance. We’ve also updated the submission process to provide greater transparency and reduce the number of data errors you receive from Portfolio Manager by submitting calendarized data from your EnergyCAP database. Steps are required to enable ENERGY STAR features in your database. Specific instructions for clients migrating from the ENERGY STAR submission process in Version 3 are available. NOTE: When migrating from Version 3 to Version 7, please review the provided documentation for Earliest Submission Month before completing your setup.

• NEW REPORT - Report-17: Missing and Overlapping Bills by Meter—This report helps you quickly identify months missing billing data and dates where multiple bills exist. We’ve taken the best parts of the legacy BL08 report series and built one report that clearly identifies problems with your billing data.

• NEW REPORT - Report-13: Bill Analysis—This may be our smartest report ever! It helps identify abnormal bills using your billing history and past/current weather data to highlight bills for analysis. We’re using quadratic regression models for use, cost, and demand to save you time and only highlight the bills that need your attention. This report enhances the content of Report-12 and replaces the AN27, BL20, BL27, and BL27 legacy reports. NOTE: We’re busy loading your databases with the regression results for all your historic bills, so if you run the report in the next few days, you may not see all your results. Expect to have all this data ready to go by the end of next week (7/10/2020).

• Updates to Version 3—In preparation for its retirement, several features have been removed from EnergyCAP Version 3 to avoid conflicting data and settings. All removed features are already available in EnergyCAP Version 7. The following items have been removed from EnergyCAP Version 3:
• ENERGY STAR submission process
• Editing buildings
• Creating/editing building groups
• Creating/editing meter groups
• Several administration settings including the Setup Manager

Sincerely,

Joel Brickell
Asst. Vice President, Client Services
EnergyCAP, Inc.