SBIR-STTR Award

There is a lack of software tools for rapid, accurate, and cost-effective building energy modeling and simulation. While some platforms for energy modeling exist, they do not openly integrate with other systems and are not structured for supporting portfolio-scale energy efficiency (EE) program management and modeling. As a result, cities, utilities, and private organizations are limited in their ability to cost-effectively develop and manage portfolio-level building improvement and investment strategies. The lack of integrated tools is significantly hindering the wide-scale adoption of energy efficiency technologies across the United States. Establishing an open portfolio management platform with a next-generation building modeling and simulation engine that connects with external systems will unlock investment in energy efficiency technologies across the United States. The platform will connect building owners, program managers, and financial institutions to data management and modeling tools and will increase efficacy and reduce costs of EE programs by supporting an accessible, and competitive, EE marketplace of building technologies, financing, and software solutions. Maalka will develop a series of open application programming and user interfaces for connecting users to a next generation energy modeling and simulation engine. The interfaces will serve as the core of our open platform to facilitate automated portfolio-level energy modeling and insight generation. Upon this platform, we will develop interfaces for managing data collection, analysis, and integration with external customer management systems.

There exists a lack of integrated software solutions for enabling cost-effective energy management, modeling, and simulation for building portfolios.While building energy modeling solutions exist, they do not integrate with platforms commonly used for data management, are not easily customizable, and are cost-prohibitive when applied to portfolio scales.As a result, governments, utilities, and private organizations are resorting to ad hoc approaches to EE program management that are costly and less impactful.These limitations are significantly hindering the adoption of EE technologies across the country.Maalka is developing PLES, a cloud-based platform that seamlessly integrates portfolio-scale energy management, modeling, simulation, and analysis so that building owners can cost-effectively administer datadriven EE/SEM programs that enable them to reduce energy-use, carbon emissions, and operating costs.Integrated program management and energy-modeling will reduce uncertainty related to the impacts of EE improvement strategies and will unlock investment in energy efficiency technologies across the United States.In Phase I, Maalka extended its API to support integrations with external systems, enabled third-party platform white-labeling to facilitate partnerships with industry leaders, and successfully deployed a functional prototype that integrated portfolio-scale data collection, validation, energy modeling, calibration, and analysis.The technical achievements were supported with extensive market engagement efforts that resulted in partnerships with global commercial asset management companies and EE program administrators.These engagements have informed the direction of Phase II development and will provide a channel through which PLES can scale.Phase II technical objectives are designed to significantly reduce the cost of portfolio-scale energy modeling, increase consumer confidence in model-driven solutions, and enable seamless integration of energy-modeling into EE/SEM program workflows.By reducing costs through cloud-based optimization, increasing transparency into modeling accuracy, and integrating with common platforms, PLES will be primed to scale across a range of industries that will finally be able to leverage advanced energy modeling capabilities.As the platform matures, an increasing number of applications that transform different market sectors will emerge.The platform will enable energy service providers and financial institutions to develop novel, more accurate building performance and financial models for driving portfolio-level investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency; utilities to enhance load curtailment strategies and improve incentive programs through more accurate customer targeting and management capabilities; cities to develop strategies for reaching carbon goals through specific EE improvements.The open platform will spur commercial innovations at the intersection of EE building technologies and software as its foundation of users and programs continues to grow.