SBIR-STTR Award

Portfolio-scale Building Energy Rating (PBER) Platform
Award last edited on: 12/23/2020

Sponsored Program
SBIR
Awarding Agency
DOE
Total Award Amount
$1,300,000
Award Phase
2
Solicitation Topic Code
08b
Principal Investigator
Rimas Gulbinas

Company Information

Maalka Inc

335 Madison Avenue 4th Floor Hub
New York, NY 10017
   (630) 715-4743
   N/A
   www.maalka.com
Location: Single
Congr. District: 12
County: New York

Phase I

Contract Number: DESC0020708
Start Date: 6/29/2020    Completed: 6/28/2021
Phase I year
2020
Phase I Amount
$200,000
There exists a lack of integrated software solutions for enabling the administration of scalable, cost-effective, and engagement-oriented energy efficiency (EE) programs. While solutions for managing individual aspects of EE programs (e.g. benchmarking, auditing) exist, they are highly disjointed and do not easily integrate with publicly- available tools developed by the Department of Energy that offer valuable, data-driven insights for improving EE. Furthermore, they are not easily customizable, are cost-prohibitive when applied to portfolio scales, and require integration with costly customer relationship management (CRM) platforms to distribute stale insights to building owners. As a result, municipalities, utilities, and private organizations are resorting to ad hoc approaches to EE program management that are costly and less impactful. These limitations significantly hinder the adoption of EE technologies across the country. PBER will enable the next generation of EE programs to leverage cutting-edge data integration, analytics, and outreach capabilities to spur EE improvements across large building portfolios. By uniquely facilitating portfolio- level management of building assets, measures, and energy data, PBER will accelerate market adoption of energy benchmarking and auditing programs through which advanced data collection and analytical tools developed by the Department of Energy (e.g., Audit Template, BS2.0, DoE Asset Score, OpenStudio) will be applied. The centralization of EE programs will generate massive efficiencies that reduce the cost of program administration and integration with DoE tools and standards will enable a new class of insights that are significantly more effective at informing EE improvement strategies. Finally, PBER will enable these insights to reach an unprecedented number of building owners and operators through novel public profiles through which engagement metrics will be tracked. In Phase I, Maalka will develop PBER, a fully functioning end-to-end cloud-based platform that integrates data across several services (BS2.0, Audit Template, Asset Score) and input formats (API, CSV, XLS, XML) to enable valuable building and portfolio-level performance and asset tracking capabilities. Integration with DoE standards and tools will enable a new class of insights that will be significantly more effective in spurring building owners to invest in EE, by providing targeted actions and enabling project prioritizations across portfolios. PBER will also be deployed across two large municipal portfolios to demonstrate its impact and efficiencies, and to collect feedback through user interviews that will be used to refine the platform and prepare it to scale into the market in Phase II. In Phase II, Maalka will use the feedback from Phase I interviews and pilot deployments to refine and expand PBER and prepare it for mass market adoption. Maalka will work with partners to rapidly deploy PBER and transform the way that EE programs are administered across the United States. Beyond the previously covered use-cases, PBER will: (1) Enable utilities to engage commercial and residential customers with targeted incentive offerings and energy-use reduction strategies, resulting in cost and emissions savings through the avoidance of new power plant construction, (2) Strengthen urban resiliency by providing municipal governments with comprehensive building datasets and portfolio-level analytical tools that can be leveraged to inform building codes and policies as well as manage emergency responses, (3) Facilitate new EE financing and investment frameworks by financial institutions by providing more integrated building performance and asset information, and (4) Help educate the next generation of data scientists focused on energy efficiency and building operations.

Phase II

Contract Number: DE-SC0020708
Start Date: 8/23/2021    Completed: 8/22/2023
Phase II year
2021
Phase II Amount
$1,100,000
There exists a lack of integrated software solutions for enabling the administration of scalable, costeffective, and engagementoriented energy efficiency EE programs. While solutions for managing individual aspects of EE programs exist, they are disjointed and do not easily integrate with DoE tools that offer valuable, datadriven insights for improving EE. Furthermore, they are costprohibitive when applied to portfolio scales, and require costly customer relationship management platforms to distribute insights to building owners. As a result, municipalities, utilities, and private organizations are resorting to ad hoc approaches to EE program management that are costly and less impactful. PBER will enable the next generation of EE programs to leverage cuttingedge data integration, analytics, and outreach capabilities to spur EE improvements across large building portfolios. By uniquely facilitating portfolio level management of building assets, measures, and energy data, PBER will accelerate market adoption of energy benchmarking and auditing programs through which data collection and analytical tools developed by the Department of Energy will be applied. The centralization of EE programs will generate efficiencies that reduce program costs and enable a new class of more insightful analytical reports. Finally, PBER will enable these insights to reach an unprecedented number of building owners through novel public profiles. Maalka successfully deployed a fully functioning proofofconcept that integrates data across DoE services to allows users to monitor the collection of BuildingSynccompliant asset and measure implementation data and understand building performance trends across portfolios. The platform also integrates building, asset, and performance data into reports that can be published to publicly accessible URLs. Maalka also conducted a dozen structured interviews with prospective users to inform development, successfully deployed pilots for two customers, and established new partnerships through which PBER can scale in Phase II. In Phase II, Maalka will deepen PBER’s integration with BSXML and AssetScore, more fully integrate energy benchmarking and auditing program management workflows, integrate Phase I feedback to optimize portfolioscale dashboards for managing assets, measures, and performance data for thousands of buildings, and significantly expand the capabilities of Public Profiles to revolutionize how EE programs engage building owners with actionable insights and information. Maalka will also establish new partnerships through which to scale PBER. Beyond the previously covered usecases, PBER will facilitate more flexible, bulk purchasing strategies at the portfolioscale, enable more targeted engagement with building owners to offer specific financial incentives, empower governments to optimize climate policies based on actual data, and facilitate new building technology financing and investment frameworks.