Case Study: City of Minneapolis achieves streamlined utility billing and measurable energy cost savings with EnergyCAP

Minneapolis Adopts EnergyCAP to Achieve Efficiency Goals

The City of Minneapolis faced a labor‑intensive, error‑prone utility billing process: departments hand‑coded long account numbers on paper invoices, invoices were lost or miscoded, and the City received frequent late‑fee and termination notices. The City had purchased EnergyCAP energy management software in 2007 but hadn’t fully integrated it into business processes until the hire of Energy Manager Brian Millberg, leaving Minneapolis without reliable tools to benchmark use or quantify savings.

EnergyCAP was implemented as the central hub for billing and metering data, using EDI invoice imports, a vendor‑provided import script, weekly accounting exports to the ERP, and the EnergyCAP Cost Avoidance module to normalize and quantify savings. The new process auto‑uploads about 90% of the City’s 175 electric meters, eliminated misplaced bills and most late notices, saved roughly two hours of clerk time weekly and about $4,000/year in clerical labor, and enabled validation of projects (e.g., a $78,000 retrofit that produced $98,000 in avoided energy costs, a $20,000 net gain); EnergyCAP now supports tracking for roughly 300 accounts and 75 buildings.

City of Minneapolis

Brian Millberg

Energy manager