Foundation Communities – Michele Bradley – 2018

Goals

Foundation Communities provides affordable housing to over 3,000 occupants at 23 residential properties. The properties cover 2.5 million square feet of real estate and have a MW of solar across all portfolios. The organization enlisted Michele Bradley to help them gather and analyze usage data to identify potential energy and water savings, develop community engagement materials, and identify potential rebates across multiple utility providers.

Solutions

With a growing solar portfolio, Foundation Communities needed to track, analyze, and manage annual savings to ensure the projects were performing well. Bradley improved their solar tracking tool by implementing the use of less manual input and more data validation.

In addition, Foundation Communities did not have access to monthly and 15-minute interval data for their properties in Northern Texas. Working with utility providers, property managers, and various web platforms, Bradley was able to obtain data for a number of those properties. Through analysis of this as well as data collected for their Austin Properties, she was able to identify energy savings through a smart power strips retrofit and an exterior lighting sensor update.

Finally, after researching rebate opportunities in North Texas and alternative financing structures, Bradley was able to recommend a zero upfront cost way to accelerate various LED lighting retrofits projects.

Potential Impact

These energy and water retrofits have an NPV of $175,000 and have the potential to save 354.5 metric tons of annual CO2. The data analytics tools and community engagement materials Bradley developed will provide Foundation Communities with education and help them find more ways to conserve energy and water in the years to come.