The building energy baseline guide: weather-normalized savings you can defend
The building energy baseline guide is a free Milvian AI guide on building a weather-normalized energy baseline. It shows how to model expected use from 6 to 12 months of bills plus cooling and heating degree days, how Aqueduct reports actual against expected use, how rate configuration turns the gap into money and how savings are verified at the meter.
The Building Energy Baseline Guide
- What an energy baseline is, and why it matters
- Why year-over-year comparisons mislead
- Degree days in plain language
- The data you need
- Building and checking the model
- From kilowatt-hours to dollars
- Verifying savings and resetting the baseline
- Using baselines across a portfolio
For: Energy and facility managers, finance and portfolio leads, and sustainability teams who need to know whether savings are real.
PDF guideThe Building Energy Baseline GuideCommon questions
A building energy baseline is the energy a building is expected to use under given conditions, modeled from its own history. Aqueduct builds it by regression on usage plus cooling and heating degree days, then reports actual use above or below it.
Aqueduct uses 6 to 12 months of history, with 6 months as the minimum. Uploading that many months of utility bills gives performance results on day one instead of waiting for monitoring to accumulate.
Degree days measure how far outdoor temperature sits above or below a reference temperature, multiplied by the days it held. They let a baseline account for weather, so a hot month is not mistaken for waste.
Utility bills also give Aqueduct the rate configuration, so the gap between expected and actual use is priced in your own tariff, not an average rate.
The guide explains how a regression baseline relates to common M&V practice such as ASHRAE Guideline 14 and IPMVP. Aqueduct supplies the measured data; your team or consultant decides the protocol and signs off.
Every building is different. Aqueduct verifies each saving at the meter against a weather-normalized baseline. The guide focuses on how to measure your own result against a baseline rather than relying on anyone else's figure.
Yes. It downloads as a PDF after a short form.
See Aqueduct on your own facility.
Bring a site, a utility bill or a question. We will show you where the loss is.