The Department of Defense (DoD) Installation Energy Test Bed sought to demonstrate innovative solutions that improve the use, access and quality of data for the purposes of efficient and informed decision-making and improved installation/facility energy and water management. Technologies should have enhanced the effectiveness of existing systems currently used by DoD and the Services for the collection and handling of facility energy and water data or provide new capability not currently offered by incumbent systems. Technologies and solutions should have improved the quality, reliability, accessibility and increased the quantity of data/information, while maintaining security and minimizing the time and cost for data system maintenance. The primary purpose of this topic was to enable installation energy managers to use building level data to prioritize capital investments that will improve building energy and water performance over time.

Technologies with the following attributes were preferred:

• Ability to integrate data from multiple disparate sources to create higher value information about building energy/water performance, to include data from: advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), real property databases, GIS, and energy audit reports.
• Offer facility energy/water benchmarking capability (i.e. compare the energy/water usage intensities of peer buildings to highlight outliers)
• Provide complete, accurate and actionable information to decision makers with minimal manual data processing.
• Address the cybersecurity requirements for handling facility-related data, including potential use of cloud computing services.
• Improve energy and water analytics, demand management and reporting capabilities versus incumbent systems.
• Ability to accept new or higher fidelity data over time with minimal reconfiguration or programming.

Technologies and solutions submitted under this topic will likely be enabling technologies that improve or enhance existing processes but do not directly affect energy and water consumption. For enabling technologies, measuring economic performance (payback or return on investment [ROI]) is difficult; nevertheless, proposals should include an explanation of how the technology will save costs and/or improve the energy/water performance and resilience of military installations.

Projects could have been led by any entity; however, partnering or collaborating with representatives from DoD Components was highly encouraged. Staff within DoD would have easier access to existing data sources and systems to which the proposed technologies and solutions would integrate. Proposals should have identified which, if any, existing data sources/systems their technology or solution would integrate or interact with and explained how they planned to access the systems to conduct the demonstration.

Funded projects will appear below as project overviews are posted to the website.

Since the passing of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, DoD has installed thousands of advanced utility meters and each DoD Component has implemented enterprise asset and utility data management systems. The intent of the utility metering sections of EPAct 2005 and EISA 2007 and the pursuant DoD activities is to improve the management of energy and water consumption, resulting in reduced waste and cost to operate our facilities and improved mission assurance. Each Service uses a different system for collecting and managing utility data, but all have encountered challenges with networking thousands of new devices (smart meters) in a reliable, efficient and cost-effective way. Although the cybersecurity approval process has recently become more established and accepted across mission spaces within DoD, there is still room for improvement in the number of installed smart meters and the reliability of the networked data stream.

As more meters come on-line, the available data is becoming a valuable resource that is currently under-utilized. To convert this resource into improved management of energy and water consumption, the data must be translated into information that is accessible, reliable and meaningful at the enterprise and installation levels. While there are examples of effective use of meter data within DoD, it is not widespread and there is great opportunity to expand and improve the use of available data to inform decision-makers and facility managers.

Below is a sample of data management systems, databases and tools currently installed and in use by DoD and the Services as well as recent initiatives related to this topic. This is not a comprehensive list and is intended to provide examples of the types of resources and related activities that proposers should familiarize themselves with as they develop proposals.

Utility Meter Data Management Systems

CIRCUITS: Navy utility meter data management system 

MDMS: Army’s meter data management system

AMRS: Air Force’s meter data management system

Asset Management Systems and Databases

iNFADS: Navy’s asset management system

BUILDER™: Army’s sustainment management system also used across DoD

TRIRIGA: Air Force’s asset management system

RPAD: Real Property Asset Database is maintained by OSD and contains data on facilities across DoD. In addition to RPAD each Component maintains databases of real property inventories (RPI) under their control.

Other Data Sources and Programs

eProject Builder: Database of energy savings performance contract (ESPC) project data.