Our client strives to improve energy efficiency for underserved communities, and PixelEdge enhances and grows its impact through custom digital tools.
Problem
The PixelEdge Solution
Results
Conclusion
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The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that energy-efficient upgrades can reduce energy usage by 20%. For those with the resources, these improvements save money and resources with smart investments in continuous energy savings. But for millions of people lacking money for upfront costs, investments in energy efficiency are out of reach. Or at least they seem to be.
Many government organizations and energy companies partially or fully subsidize energy efficiency improvements, but it can be difficult to connect these organizations with those who need help. Part of the challenge is that these organizations lack efficient tools for tracking the data for these programs. Without the ability to show progress and impact, these organizations struggle to find opportunities, fix problems, and show progress to secure more funding.
As leaders in the nation for energy retrofitting, our client specializes in identifying the right government organizations and utility companies to help individuals and communities become more energy efficient and reduce resource use. Our client works with these organizations and utilities as partners, helping low-income people improve sustainability by taking advantage of these programs.
It’s a complex business with many stakeholders:
Incentives for improvements must be researched, and implementations tracked. Our client put significant time and effort into building monthly reports for their partners, compiling data into spreadsheets and reports.
Our client needed more efficient methods to track progress against project goals and communicate successes with their partners. They needed innovative ideas to ensure their business could help their government and energy partners improve their impact on sustainability for low-income groups.
After examining their challenges, we began developing an application designed to help leaders at our client understand the impact of their initiatives. This app lets them easily share real-time progress updates with external partners, including energy companies.
We used APIs from the client’s database and processed the data to produce high-quality data visualizations. The tool can display data collected by our client from property owners, government organizations, and utility companies. We designed the displays to be flexible, creating custom views depending on the organization or individual that wants to access the information.
For example, the client can track participation and funding sources for a rebate program offered by a state government. They can also track indices like environmental justice, ensuring a low-income community is protected from heavy pollution. Or they can reduce energy burden, ensuring that a specific client limits the percentage of their income spent on utilities.
If they want to see an individual project, they can look at specific projects or properties, learn what programs they are involved in, and see the status of the improvements.
The dashboard views are designed according to client and partner programs so that they can visualize data for their custom benchmarks. PixelEdge works with the data to ensure that the information is displayed using visually appealing, useful graphics.
By focusing on our client’s partnership with government organizations and energy utilities that have programs to help, the PixelEdge software solves problems for all of the stakeholders. It helps our client easily visualize their impact on energy retrofitting, viewing project status and funding sources. It creates great information for energy and government partners, who can now view and report on their impact, helping them to secure future resources. And it helps both the client and the partners help individuals and housing complexes improve their energy efficiency.
Table 1. Stakeholder solutions
Stakeholder
Client: Energy retrofitter
Client’s partners: Energy companies and government organizations
Client’s customers: Individuals and housing complexes
Solution
Connect energy efficiency subsidies with individuals and housing companies
Track the effectiveness of programs and secure more resources
Reduce energy costs without a large upfront investment
We delivered our initial solution in just three months, and our client’s leadership adopted it immediately. They especially liked the data visualizations for the different programs and homes. Custom dashboards helped them see their impact quickly and comprehensively, allowing them to make quick adjustments or report positive results to their partners.
PixelEdge worked closely with the client over the next three months, adding new dashboards and features to improve adoption by its partners. Energy companies working with their clients can now see the impact of projects immediately, rather than wait for monthly reports.
This initiative can serve as a case study on leveraging technology to improve access to sustainability efforts, emphasizing innovation's role in environmental and social equity.
Our data visualization dashboards improved the visibility of the impact our client offers in improving energy efficiency for underserved homeowners and organizations.
PixelEdge created custom dashboards hooked into a streamlined database to improve communication and visualization of results. Leadership at our client and their utility partners benefit from PixelEdge innovations, improving energy efficiency for thousands of low-income homeowners.
