In response to the energy crisis sparked by the war in Ukraine, Danish municipalities implemented a series of energy conservation measures in 2022. Ento, in collaboration with Kommunernes Landsforening (Local Government Denmark), evaluated the effectiveness of these strategies across 74 municipalities. This case study explores how Ento's scalable analytics platform helped verify significant energy savings, showcasing the project's impact and methodology.

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Danish municipalities took strategic measures for immediate impact

While reducing energy consumption has always been a priority for municipalities, the energy crisis suddenly required more drastic measures. In September 2022, Danish authorities introduced various energy-saving initiatives to combat rising energy prices:

• Indoor temperature adjustments: Set to 19 degrees Celsius.
• Reduction of outdoor lighting: Discontinuation of non-essential aesthetic lighting.
• Operational hours reduction: Shortening the heating season and reducing heating and ventilation hours.
• Energy conservation training: Comprehensive training for building occupants.
• Lighting efficiency: Decreasing delay before motion-activated lights turn off.

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These measures were implemented across all municipalities to address the urgent need for energy efficiency.

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Ento was selected by KL – Local Government Denmark to assess the effectiveness of their energy conservation strategies. With Ento’s experience in scalable analytics across large property portfolios, we were able to carefully analyse the impact of these energy crisis measures and produce a public report.

To evaluate the success of the project, Ento conducted an impact measurement of energy savings in October, November, December 2022 and January and February 2023 in the 74 Danish municipalities. 

The impact measurement was based on electricity consumption data from eloverblik.dk and included the 9,047 locations in the municipalities for which it had been possible to obtain valid data.

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Leveraging IPMVP for accurate energy savings verification

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Ento adopted the International Performance Measurement and Verification Protocol (IPMVP), Option C (Whole Facility), for evaluating the impact of the energy-saving measures. This involved a comprehensive and systematic approach. Data was aggregated from multiple sources and allocated to specific buildings. We used advanced machine learning techniques to build a model that predicted how much energy the buildings would have used without the changes. The accuracy of the model was evaluated by looking at a specific measure called the Coefficient of Variation of the Root Mean Square Error (CV(RMSE)). Think of it as a way to see how much our model's predictions can vary. For our purposes, we decided that a variation of up to 30% is acceptable to include a model in our analysis.

To find out how much energy was saved after making some changes, we compared the energy usage we would have expected without those changes (our adjusted baseline) to the actual energy usage we saw after the changes were made.

We also wanted to be confident in our savings estimates, so we used a guideline (ASHRAE Guideline 14) to calculate the uncertainty of our savings estimates. This means we’re 95% certain that our calculations are accurate.

For more detailed insights into the data science behind this project, refer to this article by Benedetto Grillone, Senior Data Scientist at Ento.

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Municipal buildings achieved significant energy savings 

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The analysis of the energy consumption in the +9,000 municipal buildings revealed significant results. The total electricity savings over the five-month reporting period amounted to 33.98 GWh, equating to a 12.5% reduction in consumption. This reduction translated into approximately 4,085 tons of CO2 saved and financial savings exceeding 11 million Euro.

"If we had told each other before the crisis that we would save so much energy, we probably wouldn't have believed it. But we did it. It's surprising and gives us food for thought, especially regarding the environment and CO2 emissions. It may not be as difficult to reduce consumption as we thought," says Jesper Würtzen, Major at Ballerup Municipality.

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Results unveil two unexpected insights  

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Building size and savings:

The diversity of buildings, ranging from small offices to large public facilities, introduced variability in energy consumption patterns. Creating a one-size-fits-all model was not feasible. We had to customise our approach for different building types to ensure the baseline and subsequent savings calculations were accurate. Initially, we anticipated that larger buildings would be the primary contributors to energy savings due to their higher consumption levels. However, the actual results revealed surprising insights:

• Large buildings (over 25 MWh monthly consumption) saved more than 7 GWh in total.
• Small buildings (0-5 MWh monthly consumption) collectively contributed the most to overall savings, challenging the focus that typically lies on larger buildings for energy efficiency efforts.
  
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Portfolio-wide impact:

One major takeaway is the importance of assessing savings across a portfolio of buildings rather than individually. Even though each building achieved different levels of savings, implementing energy-saving measures across a large portfolio showed an overall positive effect.

The savings histogram highlights a crucial point: despite variations in individual building savings, a diversified approach across a large portfolio generally yields positive results, balancing out fluctuations. Standardising projects across the portfolio reduces risk and makes the investment more attractive to financial institutions.

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Validation and future implications

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The project successfully validated the municipalities' efforts in energy reduction, contributing to broader discussions on energy efficiency strategies. Ento's robust analytics platform was instrumental in integrating data seamlessly, executing machine learning calculations, and providing reliable savings verification.

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Inspiration for continuous improvement

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The success of this project inspired Ento to enhance its savings verification module, making it more user-friendly and compliant with IPMVP standards. This tool now facilitates quick and easy verification of energy savings across an organisation’s building portfolio.

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Shall we help you optimise your buildings’ energy consumption? Book a meeting or contact us to get started. 

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