GreenQuest Blog all about GreenQuest – your personal Web-based energy dashboard

Energy management software publisher Good Steward Software has announced record sales in 2009 and a new company name. Sales revenue was up 50% from 2008, the eighth consecutive year-over-year increase in sales. A record number of education, government and commercial multi-site organizations became EnergyCAP clients in 2009. By year-end, the company was averaging almost 200 new energy tracking users each week.

Steve Heinz, company founder and Chief Executive Officer, said, “We’re very pleased that both sales and users grew at unprecedented rates in 2009, despite the challenging economic conditions. This underscores the value and importance that our clients place in what I’ve been preaching for thirty years—that getting a handle on your energy information is the first step toward energy efficiency.

“We changed our name to strengthen the EnergyCAP brand, but of course remain fundamentally focused on helping clients be good stewards of their limited energy and fiscal resources. Since energy is the most controllable operating expense in most organizations, good stewardship starts with effective energy management because you can’t manage what you don’t measure.

“We expect growth to continue in 2010 as we launch our initial web-based SaaS (Software as a Service) version of EnergyCAP and release upgrades to our three core products. We’re also anxiously anticipating an enthusiastic response to a new shared savings offering that will return utility bill refunds and cost recoveries to clients at no out-of-pocket expense.”

EnergyCAP, Inc. publishes GreenQuest, a personal energy tracking tool, and EnergyCAP energy efficiency software.

Good Steward Software announces a new release of its free online energy dashboard, GreenQuest. GreenQuest 2.0 includes automatic data submittal to the EPA’s ENERGY STAR program so that commercial buildings can quickly and easily obtain free ENERGY STAR ratings. The updated version also features a powerful reporting tool that sponsors use to mine and analyze building energy data, a carbon footprint equivalency chart and an improved interface.

GreenQuest is a free-to-use online energy dashboard that enables households and commercial building owners to track their utility bills. Local and regional sponsors provide GreenQuest to their customers or community through a privately-branded GreenQuest website, placing a link on the organization’s homepage, and promoting the GreenQuest link. More than 200 organizations in 35 states have already signed up as GreenQuest sponsors. Typical sponsors are school districts, local and state governments, churches, homeowners associations, real estate brokers, non-profit environmental organizations and “green” businesses.

“We’re very pleased with this new release, because it offers better value—more functionality and usability—than other online energy tools. Whereas Microsoft Hohm, Google PowerMeter and a number of other systems are targeted toward future smart grid opportunities, GreenQuest offers tremendous value to 120 million households and single building owners today. For thirty years, we’ve been the leading publisher of energy efficiency software, so we know what users want and what information is useful to them,” says Steve Heinz, publisher of GreenQuest. “GreenQuest offers more value today because it obtains free ENERGY STAR ratings, serves both home and commercial building owners, tracks three types of utilities (electric, water, gas/oil/propane), and provides sponsors with private branding, messaging, and lead generation.”

Through the ENERGY STAR submittal feature, GreenQuest automatically submits commercial building energy usage data to the EPA’s Portfolio Manager, which is the ENERGY STAR national benchmarking system. Once the data is submitted, ENERGY STAR assigns a building energy rating and returns the rating to GreenQuest. The 1 to 100 rating is a nationally-recognized energy efficiency benchmark; high ratings are known to increase a building’s resale and lease value and some states will soon require ENERGY STAR ratings for commercial building real estate transactions. Highly-rated buildings can also receive an ENERGY STAR label and plaque in recognition of superior efficiency.

The new Sponsor Management Console gives GreenQuest sponsors information about the users who access GreenQuest through the sponsor’s website. This is valuable in measuring the effectiveness of energy reduction initiatives, tracking the utilization of GreenQuest by their community members, and generating leads for marketing efforts. GreenQuest 2.0 also includes a carbon footprint equivalency, which communicates how many acres of trees are needed to offset the building’s carbon emissions, and an improved interface for quick reporting of energy data.

Through December 31, 2009, Good Steward Software is waiving the $995 sponsor setup fee for Basic and Premium GreenQuest sponsorships. To learn about sponsorship, go to http://www.mygreenquest.com/sponsor.php. To watch a short video on GreenQuest, go to http://www.myGreenQuest.com/video. To sign up for a free user account, go to http://www.myGreenQuest.com and click on “Start Using GreenQuest.”

According to news service Keystone Edge, megacompanies “Microsoft, GE and Google are all jumping on the energy efficiency bandwagon that Good Steward Software of State College has been driving for nearly three decades.”  Good Steward Software is the publisher of GreenQuest.

Keystone Edge goes on to say, “The big guns are developing applications to track energy use for institutional and residential customers, but Good Steward’s offerings–EnergyCAP for institutions and GreenQuest for residential customers–are gaining significant steam.”

You can read the whole article here.

According to a news story by ABC News 27, Chambersburg Area School District in Pennsylvania has saved over $600,000 in utility costs in the past 22 months.  Part of the school district’s energy efficiency strategy is providing its own privately-branded GreenQuest website to the community.  With GreenQuest, district residents and students can track their energy consumption for free.  Residents and students can access GreenQuest on the school district’s energy conservaton page.

As reported on Hospitality Net, the American Hotel & Lodging Association is offering GreenQuest to its members for free energy and water tracking.

The July 13 Flex Your Power newsletter reveals the results of a study on energy efficiency messaging by Professor Wesely Schultz of California State University San Marcos.  According to Schultz, “individuals tend to base their environmental decisions more on what they think is normal, than on what they think is simply ‘the right thing to do.’”  In his study, doorhangers were distributed to 1,200 homes, each containing one of five messages.  Four of the messages were “traditional ideas such as saving energy saves money, is socially or environmentally responsible, or is easy to do.”  

However, the fifth message was quite different.  Instead, “the fifth message compared the household’s energy use to average use in the neighborhood.”  After several weeks of monitoring electricity use, “researchers found that homes that received the fifth message achieved the greatest reductions in energy use, with high consumers using significantly less electricity after the campaign.” 

The lesson is that consumers are highly motivated by their sense of being normal–how they stack up to others.  Alone, energy efficiency messaging is not enough…a means to measure and compare is also needed for maximum results.  GreenQuest provides both a platform for messaging and comparisons of actual energy use.

In its Summer 2009 News for Business and Industry, ENERGY STAR promotes GreenQuest in its article, “American Hotel and Lodging Association Offers Software with ENERGY STAR Ratings:”

The American Hotel and Lodging Association (AH&LA) has announced it is sponsoring GreenQuest, a new tool from Good Steward Software that provides energy use information and ENERGY STAR ratings. AH&LA is sponsoring this software to promote energy efficiency and sustainability to its member hotels and lodging facilities that can now use the tool, free of charge, to easily submit their building data for a rating.

GreenQuest is the latest software tool to partner with EPA to promote energy tracking, benchmarking, and reporting of building energy efficiency and environmental performance. GreenQuest uses automated benchmarking, an EPA Web-based data exchange system, to send energy and building data to EPA in exchange for ENERGY STAR ratings. GreenQuest is unique because it is the first free Web-based software to offer sponsors such as AH&LA the ability to custom-brand the software and Web site to facilitate energy efficiency campaigns to their customers. To capitalize on the energy intelligence obtained from GreenQuest, AH&LA has also partnered with Burton Energy Group to supply its members with discounted building audits and retrofit services.

To learn more about ENERGY STAR resources for the hospitality sector, please visit the ENERGY STAR Web site. To learn more about AH&LA’s benchmarking efforts, please visit AH&LA’s Web site.

In an article on CIOZone.com, GreenQuest is referenced with Google, Sony, and Cisco as a notable technology.  In Earth Day Brings Out the Wacky and Wonderful, GreenQuest is described as a “site [that] helps consumers analyze their utility bills, predict future energy use based on weather and other factors and compare their usage versus neighbors or similar users.”  The article appears in the “Green IT” section of the web site.

GreenQuest was featured in the April 29 e-newsletter called GreenRetros.  GreenRetros is published by Green Me Now, which is an agent for sustainable retrofitting.  You can read the newsletter article by clicking here.  GreenQuest can track your energy projects to see if they reduce energy consumption and cost.

In honor of Earth Day, Good Steward Software announces the release of GreenQuest, a personal energy efficiency website. Details about GreenQuest are located at www.MyGreenQuest.com. GreenQuest is powered by EnergyCAP, which has been the best-selling energy management software for 30 years.

GreenQuest meets three important objectives. First, it is a valuable marketing and communications tool for organizations that sign up to sponsor a privately-branded GreenQuest website. In turn, sponsors provide their private GreenQuest site to their customers, residents, tax payers, etc. Second, GreenQuest makes it easy for anyone who pays utility bills for a single building—house, office building, apartment, restaurant, church, school, etc.—to get a handle on their energy use and environmental impact. And third, businesses using GreenQuest can receive an ENERGY STAR rating for their building through an automated submittal process.

“There has never been a better time to promote energy efficiency and environmental sustainability,” explained Chris S. Heinz, Director of Marketing for Good Steward Software, “and organizations are always looking for new, cost-effective marketing and communications tools. GreenQuest unites those elements in one application.” Heinz continued, “GreenQuest will bring real value to anyone who pays utility bills, whether commercial or residential. And every time a GreenQuest user logs in to enter and analyze his utility bills, he’ll see the sponsor’s message. Based on the high level of sponsorship interest we have already received from a wide range of organizations, including businesses, non-profits, state and local governments, and others, we are very excited about GreenQuest’s potential.”

Organizations benefit from GreenQuest by sponsoring a privately-branded GreenQuest website and making it available free-of-charge to employees, customers, or residents. When users visit the sponsored GreenQuest site each month to enter their utility bills and analyze the results, they see the sponsor’s ads, coupons, or other important news. GreenQuest is viral and sticky, as users promote the sponsoring organization by sharing the GreenQuest link with their friends, family, and co-workers. In addition, sponsors will have access to GreenQuest data through a secure, convenient Web interface, enabling them to target marketing and communications messages.

GreenQuest’s innovative design enables any single household or organization to track its electric, fuel, and water bills. The application provides easy-to-understand, informative charts and benchmarks that make it easy for users to track monthly utility usage and cost, obtain an ENERGY STAR building rating, compare energy usage to peers, evaluate energy conservation efforts, see how the weather impacts energy usage, determine their property’s carbon footprint, and more.

Good Steward Software is recognized across North America as the producer of EnergyCAP^®, the best-selling energy accounting software for 30 years. More than 1,000 organizations, including state and local governments, colleges and universities, retail chains, school districts, and energy consultants, currently use EnergyCAP to track and analyze more than $3 billion in annual energy expenditures.