WegoWise Partners with Green & Healthy Homes Initiative in Baltimore

BOSTON, Dec. 6, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- WegoWise, a leading building performance analytics provider, today announced the successful deployment of a pilot program with the Green & Healthy Homes Initiative™ (GHHI) to track and benchmark energy data in Baltimore area homes. Through their collaboration, WegoWise and GHHI have identified significant utility savings for low-income residents in the city and county as a result of integrated energy efficiency and health and safety improvements performed in homes in the GHHI program.

Based on more than 24 months of utility data from a pilot project in 31 single-family homes in the Baltimore area, GHHI's energy efficiency retrofits have saved low-income homeowners an average of $400 per year, making a meaningful difference in their economic stability. In addition to the utility savings, homeowners that have received GHHI services see, on average, a 67% reduction in emergency room visits due to asthma episodes. By performing retrofits such as improving a home's seal, GHHI mitigates environmental elements that can negatively impact a child with respiratory illnesses. As a result, GHHI helps families stay healthy while putting more money in their pockets, by reducing emergency room visits that typically cost more than $6000 and preventing hospitalizations, which average $53,000.

GHHI uses WegoWise to track and benchmark utility data for homes in its program to verify that efficiency retrofits meet projected cost savings. As a result, the WegoWise platform eliminates the need for GHHI staff to organize and update complex utility spreadsheets. GHHI has also recently begun using the WegoWise platform to track the results of retrofits on 135 Rhode Island homes, and is in the process of expanding its use of WegoWise to track utility data in more homes in Baltimore and cities nationwide.

"WegoWise has significantly enhanced our ability to accurately track the cost-effectiveness of the services we provide to the families we serve," said Ruth Ann Norton, executive director of GHHI. "Energy efficiency contributes to vital economic and health benefits for children and families living in low-income communities. By enabling us to target energy retrofits and verify subsequent savings, WegoWise provides important data that allows us to continue to refine the services that offer the most value for our clients and our partners."

The WegoWise platform works by automatically collecting utility data from a portfolio of buildings, then normalizing and comparing those buildings by energy intensity and building characteristics. WegoWise enables GHHI to track data after the retrofits are complete to verify that improvements are achieving savings as projected. Visually compelling charts and graphs help GHHI staff to immediately identify savings and successes.

"GHHI is doing fantastic work for so many families that suffer from unhealthy and inefficient homes," said Barun Singh, founder and CTO of WegoWise. "We're proud to support a program that saves families thousands of dollars per year in medical bills, helps kids miss less school and puts utility bill money back in families' pockets. The staff at organizations like GHHI have more important things to do than enter utility data into spreadsheets."

About WegoWise
WegoWise provides an industry-leading web-based utility analytics platform for the building-performance industry. Bridging big data and energy efficiency, WegoWise distills large aggregations of energy and water data into useful, actionable information for building owners, managers, energy auditors and building efficiency programs, enabling them to automatically track, understand and benchmark building performance, and make better efficiency investment decisions. WegoWise's platform regularly identifies impressive opportunities for cost savings, as inefficient buildings typically pay four times the utility costs of efficient buildings. Learn more at wegowise.com.

About the Green & Healthy Homes Initiative™
The Green & Healthy Homes Initiative™ (GHHI) works in collaboration with local and federal agencies, and philanthropic partners to align, braid, and coordinate funding and programs to create green, healthy, and safe homes in low-income communities nationwide.

Directed by the Coalition to End Childhood Lead Poisoning (Coalition), with support from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Energy and national and local foundations GHHI replaces stand-alone programs with a comprehensive strategy to improve health, economic and social outcomes through an integrated housing intervention framework. The GHHI platform has been implemented in 16 cities nationwide, with more sites to be added over the next year.

Media Contact
Zoe Fishman
Antenna Group for WegoWise
[email protected]
415-977-1929

SOURCE WegoWise