MGE has introduced a new tool that will make it easier for business customers to comply with the City of Madison’s energy benchmarking requirements. MyMeter, a multifunctional online resource, is available to all MGE business customers.

The City’s new policy, which is part of its Building Energy Savings Program (BESP), requires non-residential commercial buildings 25,000 square feet and larger to benchmark energy use annually. Nonresidential commercial buildings 50,000 square feet and larger are required to conduct a building tune-up every four years. The BESP requirements will be phased in over time, beginning in 2024.

“The City’s requirements are going to be detailed,” said Mead Bradley, Director of Property Management and Operations at Urban Land Interests (ULI), a MyMeter pilot participant. “While our team is still testing the platform, we are excited that what appears to be a large task will be much more manageable with MGE’s MyMeter tool.”

ULI and a group of MGE business customers have been testing MyMeter for several months. Others have viewed a software demonstration and will be using MyMeter soon, including Fiore Companies, a Midwest investment group headquartered in Madison.

“We have buildings in other communities with benchmarking requirements, and it is very difficult to obtain the necessary aggregated data and time consuming to enter it all by hand,” said Stacy Nemeth, Fiore Chief Operating Officer. “MyMeter will make this process seamless and prevent data entry errors. We will definitely use this tool regularly for the buildings we own and manage in Madison.”

For Fiore, that will be approximately 90 meters tracking on MyMeter.

MyMeter features

“We invested in software enhancements so commercial customers could not only see their natural gas and electricity use but also obtain streamlined access to benchmarking their facilities,” explained Matthew Matenaer, Senior Engineer Business Customer Relations.

MyMeter is easy for MGE commercial customers to set up and use. Once businesses enter their building characteristics, the tool does most of the work.

Commercial customers can:

• Access their MyMeter dashboard through the My Account portal on mge.com. Non-MGE accountholders, such as property managers, can request aggregated whole-building energy use through a separate process.
• Define their meter group—request whole-building aggregated usage or individual tenant accounts and meters that make up a building’s usage.
• Choose to automate data transfer to their existing ENERGY STAR^® Portfolio Manager (ESPM) or benchmark within the MyMeter dashboard.
• Transfer data to ESPM and retrieve their benchmarking score. Using ESPM is a requirement under the City’s benchmarking policy.

“MGE’s tool does everything we need it to do—from figuring and reporting to directly linking to ENERGY STAR,” Bradley said. “We have hundreds of meters in Madison, so using it should make the benchmarking process quite slick.”

Benchmarking is an effective way to manage energy use as it helps building owners make more informed decisions about building operations and strategies to save energy. In addition to being a benchmarking tool, MyMeter allows businesses to explore cost trends and make comparisons to weather variables and historical usage.

“MGE’s efforts to really help people understand their energy use and comply efficiently and accurately with Madison’s requirements is greatly appreciated,” Nemeth said.

Learn more at mge.com/mymeter.

MyMeter will be the featured topic at our next Business Customer Forum coming this spring. We will be providing more information about the forum soon.

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