Verdigris 2018 Retrospective: Our Top Highlights and Biggest Wins
It’s nearly Valentine’s Day, which means we’re more than a month into another year and already heads-down focused on some exciting new initiatives with our customers and partners. But before we get too far into our new projects, it’s important to reflect on the many breakthroughs and accomplishments we had in 2018. If you’ve missed any of our product release emails read on to see where we’ve been and where we’re going this year.
Company Updates
Growth
2018 was certainly a year of growth for Verdigris. We outgrew our Silicon Valley HQ and expanded further in the NASA campus, adding nearly 40% more office space. Perhaps more exciting was the opening of a new satellite office in Taiwan! This growth has enabled us to scale our sales, engineering, and technical support to provide the same standard of service to all of our customers around the world. Our Taiwan team is spearheaded by four experienced firmware and software engineers to accelerate engineering execution. To further support our Asia-Pac customers, we built processes to facilitate delivery for customers in China and established new channel partnerships across Asia.
Awards
We are incredibly proud to have won numerous industry awards in 2018. Our Asia office was awarded a Taiwanese government subsidy for innovative technologies. Additionally, we received the 2018 New Product Innovation Award from one of the world’s most respected market research firms (stay tuned for more on that 😉), the NTT Data Open Innovation Prize, and the Commercial Value Prize at the China Mobile Communications Corp (CMCC) Hack-a-thon. To round the year out, Verdigris earned certification from the City of San Francisco Building Inspection Division, one of the most robust certifications in the country.
We added some great customers and new strategic partners this year, including Fortune 500 giants such as the world’s largest e-commerce company, the world’s largest builder of electrical grids, two of the world’s largest GPU makers, two of the world’s largest energy management companies, the world’s largest winery, and more.
We also added several new channel partners to help us scale sales and distribution exponentially. Furthermore, our customers continue to be happy with their experience. Overall, 80% of our customers are satisfied, and 2/3 of our customers said they would recommend us!
Additionally, several of our customers had some significant breakthroughs with their energy intelligence and we‘re sharing their stories so that others can learn from their success. Check out the summaries below, or follow the links to read the case studies.
Energy Savings
Verdigris…allowed us to identify issues that we would not have otherwise been able to catch.
-Jim Hussey, CEO, Marina Mechanical
Using Verdigris real-time Intelligent Alerts, Marina Mechanical was able to find some significant inefficiencies at one of their customer properties caused by inaccurate chiller setpoints. By correcting these setpoints, Marina was able to save their customer about 20% annually. This case study was a great example of how energy service companies (ESCOs) are seeing the value of the Verdigris platform to provide ongoing management and continuous commissioning for their portfolio.
Critical Systems & Process Equipment
For the first time in the history of our company I can tell you what percentage of our energy budget is taken by a particular circuit. I would hate to think what it would cost to use traditional metering for each of these devices. Even if you spent a million on traditional metering, you wouldn’t get this detail.
-Global Lead, Critical Environments, Fortune 500 Manufacturing
Using motor health data only available through Verdigris, a Fortune 500 manufacturer was able to spot a refrigerant leak on a chiller used in the manufacturing process. By catching the leak early the customer was able to order a temporary replacement chiller to use during maintenance, thus preventing any downtime and lost production. This alone may have saved the company millions. Furthermore, during the investigation the customer also found that they had been using a control package for their chillers that was designed for HVAC rather than manufacturing process water. The savings from a new manufacturing control package is expected to pay for the Verdigris service many times over.
Battery Optimization
Verdigris partnered with Korean manufacturer S&P Global to prove the ROI of AI-driven battery storage control. The results were more than promising. By implementing smart battery storage and discharge in combination with real-time energy monitoring and forecasting, Verdigris was able to reduce demand charges by 21%. Anyone with an energy storage solution should consider integrating AI optimization to get the most out of the investment.
Occupancy, Employee Comfort, and Productivity
Most people assume energy efficiency has to come at the expense of occupant comfort. In a recent experiment with a Fortune 500 manufacturer, Verdigris found that this doesn’t have to be true…in fact, you can be energy efficient while improving occupant comfort and productivity. Using weather, occupancy, BMS, and energy data, Verdigris analyzed several different optimization scenarios and found that our AI could reduce energy usage by 19% while maximizing employee comfort and increasing productivity by at least $300k. If you have comfort or productivity goals contact us today to see how we can help.
Product Updates
Intelligent Alerts
Having the right information at the right time is critical; flooded with data, value is lost in the noise. Meet your annual reduction or performance goals through notifications of issues in time to take corrective action. Verdigris uses statistical models to “learn” the normal energy usage of your building at the circuit-level in order to alert you about circuits that are not performing optimally. Our algorithms account for severity and noise to minimize false-positives and enable you to prioritize high-impact issues over those that may not require immediate action.
80% of our beta testers signed up to continue receiving alerts. If you’re interested in receiving Intelligent Alerts, contact us to sign up.
Improved Weekly Reports
The Weekly Report is one of our most popular features. We summarize weekly energy usage trends for your building and put it right in your inbox every Monday. We recently upgraded these emails to include more valuable information while also presenting energy usage changes more clearly. These emails now include peak demand and power quality summaries.
Panel Deduplication
To get a complete picture of your building’s energy it’s sometime necessary to have some overlap metering, i.e. metering panels that are upstream/downstream of each other; this duplication can make analysis difficult. Our systems use the panel hierarchy to “de-duplicate” the data and avoid double counting your energy usage. For example, if you have a system on the mains panel as well as a downstream distribution panel, our systems make sure not to count the energy from the panel twice across those two meters.
Admin Console
In order for large organizations to more easily utilize Verdigris for their global facilities portfolio, we recently launched a new administration page with expanded features. You can now manage your account, create users, manage permissions, reset passwords, add buildings, and manage your panels/circuits.
Disaggregation
Improve the ROI on your metering infrastructure by monitoring more endpoints with less hardware using Verdigris Disaggregation. With Disaggregation, one sensor can measure dozens of branch circuits and hundreds of electrical devices downstream. This ability creates unprecedented level of visibility into the building. From a single meter, view device-level energy usage across your building and easily find new opportunities for savings.
New Ethernet Option
Verdigris systems now have an ethernet option for installations in areas with insufficient 4G/wifi signal, for example in basement mechanical rooms or distant corners of a warehouse. Contact us today if you want to fill in your energy blind spots.
Improved Verdigris App
In order to improve the analytics experience we cleaned up the dashboard, made it more intuitive, and added additional features. Check system status on the homepage so you can be sure you’re always connected. We also added weather normalization so you can rule out temperature as a cause of energy changes, and we added current (amps) to enable more advanced power analysis.
Measurement & Verification (M&V) Dashboard
Our ultimate goal is to make it easier for customers to find energy savings in their buildings. To that end, we added a new set of dashboards to the app including:
- By Day: which allows you to compare energy usage between two time periods. This dashboard facilitates determining the energy savings after a change in equipment or operations in your building.
- By Hour: that enables you compare the average energy usage by hour of the day. Easily compare the average energy usage during working hours versus non-working hours for a period of time.
- By Breaker: which allows you to easily compare two pieces of equipment for the same time period. You can use this dashboard to check the difference in energy usage between equipment (e.g. different RTUs).
- By End-use: compare two categories of equipment over the same time period. For example, you can compare the energy usage between cooling and lighting.
And much more in 2019!
If you’ve made it this far, hopefully you’re pleased with our progress and you’re already thinking about how you can take advantage of the new features. Our goal is to make the best product we can and give you the best energy intelligence available. If you’ve been waiting for any features not mentioned or if you have feedback for us, leave it in the comments.
Thanks!
