Custom Efficiency Services

Customers are not always able to predict what energy savings strategies will be viable in their facilities. Michaels provides hundreds of energy audits, in-depth studies , and customized calculations for energy savings every year.

Energy audits include on-site assessments of facilities by an experienced engineer. Audits provide clear direction to building owners to help them drive their facilities toward efficiency goals.

Feasibility studies include detailed analyses of capital-intensive and/or complex opportunities to determine the economic viability of implementation to a high degree of accuracy and confidence.

Custom rebates are customized energy efficiency calculations for projects that don’t fall under the prescriptive measure umbrella.

Since 2013, our Rebate Processing and Customer Care Call Center has been 100% dedicated to energy-efficient (EE) program support. They understand the industry, its customers, and the impact of EE programs.

Our friendly, supportive staff provides a full range of customer care support, leading to increased customer participation and positive customer experiences. We believe in resolving calls in one interaction. If a call transfer is required, we make it a hot transfer to get a resolution as soon as possible.

From increased program participation to customer experiences, we make your goals our goals.

Current Service Offerings:

• Processing and distribution of incentive payments
• Customized reporting*
• Spanish-speaking staff and translation system
• Program-specific outreach campaigns
• Toll-free number with auto attendant
• Telephone support 8:00am – 5:00pm CST
• Afterhours voicemail with next-day responses
• Email, mail, and fax support
• Phone monitoring and metric tracking
• Hot transfers when needed
• Phone scripts and reference manuals
• Dedicated contact for client and training needs
• Business continuity plan with outage notification

*We use a Vonage phone system, which allows us to customize our clients’ call center reports to meet each metric in their RFP, send it per their preferred schedule, and fulfill ad hoc data requests.

Michaels uses a combination of project savings estimates and uncertainty to recommend which large custom projects should evaluated, pre and post project implementation.

Michaels provides project file reviews, onsite data collection, billing analysis, and engineering calculations to determine the energy savings for installing specific energy efficiency measures.

Utilities need to accurately capture their projected savings.  When savings are taken away during third-party EM&V, it can sting in a big way, including the bottom line.  Knowing where (what projects) to deploy relatively expensive savings verification is critical to being cost effective.  Michaels only recommends verification on projects with substantial savings at risk.  At-risk savings is a combination of project impacts and uncertainty in key parameters.  With thousands of M&V projects as case studies, recognizing these high-risk projects is second nature.

Measurement and verification provides critical feedback on the technical accuracy of calculations to the program administrators, allowing them to be able to claim savings for projects more accurately.

Technical Support covers all aspects of utility custom efficiency. Services include baseline and efficient energy use and savings calculations, measurement and verification of savings, technical guide book writing and maintenance/updates, research and development of EE measures, data management, project management, utility customer awareness training, utility account management training, program design and implementation.

We have an extensive library of calculations and system models already built and tested with measured feedback. They are available to be utilized quickly and cost-effectively. Calculations are well documented, easy to follow, and give utility staff peace of mind that the calculations are technically sound and defendable.

Michaels Energy folds all of the services above into a cohesive offering for utilities, assisting utility staff in running complex commercial and industrial custom efficiency programs. As utility personnel need technical insight for program design, customer system optimization or emerging technologies, Michaels provides it from industry research, firsthand experience and sound engineering principles.