The EPA?s Revamped Portfolio Manager Tool is Now Live! By: Aliza Skolnik July 30, 2013 The EPA?s revamped Portfolio Manager tool is now live! Portfolio Manager is a free online tool for measuring and tracking energy and water consumption for buildings. In addition to establishing baseline energy performance, setting energy goals, and tracking energy improvements, the tool can also provide a score on a 1-100 scale indicating how efficiently a building performs compared to similar buildings nationwide. If the score is 75 or greater, the building can earn an ENERGY STAR certification.
Portfolio Manager was taken offline June 25, 2013 and went live again July 17, 2013 with several new features and changes. EPA describes the updates as follows:
- Improved collaboration with advanced sharing and reporting functions
- Custom tabs let you plan and set goals to track both current and future projects
- Performance upgrades, enhanced ease-of-use, and powerful new features
- Easier data entry with enhanced graphics, wizards, and prompts
After reviewing the new tool and participating in training seminars, here is a summary of some of the key modifications I noticed:
- Electronic Submissions: The new Portfolio Manager will allow for a completely paper-free ENERGY STAR certification process!
- Revision Dates: Some revision dates in the data entry history appear to have incorrectly changed to 6/24/13 when no changes were made on that date. This is the date of the day before the system went down; therefore, this appears to be a glitch related to transferring data over to the tool.
- Score: EPA publicized that scores may have changed, and if they did, it should have been a slight change.
- Space Function Types: The upgrade includes an expanded list of more than 80 function types. The new types will be treated in the same way that ?Other? was treated in the old Portfolio Manager. An automated process was used to migrate the old data into the new space types so double check all your space types!
- Other Category: The new Portfolio Manager increases the percentage of non-ratable space allowed for certification. The limit of the space type ?Other? in an eligible property was raised from 10% to 25%.
- Data Center: There is no longer an option to use estimates for the IT energy consumption. Going forward, you must either measure IT Energy using one of the accepted approaches or reclassify the data center space as the primary building space type.