A flat dataset titled "City of Boston Utility Data (2011-2015)" was retrieved from https://data.cityofboston.gov/ and disaggregated into
a normalized relational dataset. The original dataset contains 788,428 rows of monthly utility data for elecctricity, natural gas, oil, steam and water
consumed by the facilities operated by the City of Boston. The data was then imported into the AEI analytics platform and combined with our standard
visualization toolset and GeoJSON shapefiles provided by the City of Boston to produce the final product.
Choose a View from the right column. The default view is Size (in ft2). Choosing a particular view could result in disappearing facilities that have zero data
for a given view. For example, there are only 3 facilities that have Steam usage in 2015. All other facilities will disappear when that view is chosen.
Filter for facility Size or EUI
Use the Square Feet slider control to reduce the dataset to only those facilities in a certain size range. Note that many facilities in the dataset show a zero square footage and will disappear from the view if the slider range does not include zero.
Use the EUI slider control to reduce the dataset to only those facilities in a certain EUI range.
In this case, facilities with a zero square footage are always included in the view, but the EUI calculation is meaningless for these facilities.
In general, only Facility Type = BLDG have a meaningful EUI calculation.
The aggregate totals at the bottom of the display will update according to the filter conditions.
Filter for Facility Group or Type
Click on a circle in the Facility Groups or Facility Types lists to show or hide facilities according to their Site Group or Type classification.
For example, to show only the Boston Public Schools, click on the circles for all the other Facility Groups to turn them off. To filter for just Buildings, turn off
all the Facility Types except BLDG.
The aggregate totals at the bottom of the display will update according to the filter conditions.
To view a Facility's details
Click on any facility on the map to reveal a slide-down panel with details for that facility. Click anywhere on the slide-down panel to close it.
About the EUI Calculation
The Energy Utilization Index (EUI) is a measure of a building's energy consumption. The unit of measure for EUI is kBtu/ft2/year. To obtain the kBtu (energy) consumed
by a building, we convert fossil fuel utilities into a common unit of Btu. Electricity is typically reported by the Utilities in terms of kWh, natural gas in therms, oil in gallons and steam in
thousands or millions of pounds of steam. A year's worth of utility billing data is required since the EUI is defined as energy per square foot per year. Once converted to the common unit of measure, we divide by the size of the conditioned building space (in square feet) to arrive
at the EUI value. A building with a lower EUI value than another is said to be more energy efficient. EUI values can range from
an extremely efficient value of 35 to as high as 500 or more for very energy intense facilities such as supermarkets and hospitals.
The EUI is a very simple calculation that can be made with nothing more than a year's worth of monthly utility bills for a facility. A more
relevant set of calculations can be made when more data is available, such as seasonal EUI profiling, to determine if a building might have
different efficiencies depending on the seasons of the year and the fuel supply mix.
For More Information
Contact AEI at info@aeintelligence.com for more information.