Using Data to Lessen the Impact of COVID-19 on Small Businesses

As the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the world, businesses shut their doors as governments reacted with mandates to close non-essential businesses in an effort to control the disease. As a society, we looked for ways to support local businesses that are pillars in our communities, while businesses tried anything to stay afloat. Utilities reacted by taking steps to commit to the safety of the communities that they serve, double down on their communications to provide operations changes, and offer flexible payment options for those in financial need.

Immediately after COVID-19 shutdowns began, we responded by expanding our Virtual Commissioning™ Program approach to offer an additional service of identifying and engaging non-essential businesses that had energy consumption patterns that are in line with “business as usual” operations, indicating that the facility had an opportunity to further shutdown equipment while their building is unoccupied. By proactively providing this service to business customers, the intention is to provide financial relief by curbing unnecessary usage and costs. In the past three weeks, our team has analyzed over 1,500 accounts and identified hundreds of sites with energy saving opportunities that we are directly engaging. Power TakeOff is currently administering this service for two major utilities’ business customers who are likely to be most affected by the recent COVID-19 shutdowns.