Discover more opportunities available at Energy Exchange.
Step into the future of energy at the 2024 Energy Exchange pre-event workshops, where innovation, collaboration, and expertise converge to shape the landscape of the industry.
Available Tracks
The pre-event workshops were held on March 25, 2024, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. Learn more about each workshop below.
The Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) pre-event workshops are offered at no cost to attendees. Energy Exchange registration is encouraged but not required to participate in these trainings.
Track 1: Federal Funding Opportunities
Lessons Learned and Best Practices for Leveraging FEMP's AFFECT Grant Program
This workshop, co-hosted by FEMP Director Mary Sotos and Soudeh Motamedi, focuses on FEMP's Assisting Federal Facilities with Energy Conservation Technologies (AFFECT) program, which provides grants for energy and water efficiency projects at U.S. federal government-owned facilities. Hear lessons learned and approaches from past AFFECT grant awardees, and participate in a facilitated, closed door listening session. (NOTE: The first half of the session is open for all participants; the listening session in the second half is for federal employees and contractors with a federal sponsor only.)
How Agencies and ESCOs Can Undertake ENABLE Using GSA Schedule MAS SIN 334512
Managers from the General Services Administration (GSA) Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) SIN 334512 will discuss use of the Schedule for ENABLE, including requirements and procedures for energy service companies (ESCOs), and how agencies can use the Schedule to procure projects.
Leveraging Energy Sales Agreements Under ESPC ENABLE and DOE's IDIQ Contract
There is an increasing interest in solar photovoltaics, battery energy storage systems, and geothermal heat pumps to help meet decarbonization and resilience goals. However, facility managers may not know that energy sales agreement (ESA) contracting can be an effective, efficient, and lower cost way to procure and install these projects. FEMP, national labs, and agency partners will discuss best practices and examples that attendees may be able to leverage at their own sites.
Track 2: Driving Toward Net-Zero Emissions Buildings and Operations
Carbon Pollution-Free Electricity Procurement Workshop
FEMP will summarize emerging strategies and resources for meeting the ambitious carbon pollution-free electricity (CFE) procurement targets under Executive Order (EO) 14057. This workshop will demonstrate valuable planning tools, including FEMP's CFE Program Availability Map to identify eligible green tariff offerings, a Balancing Authority area lookup tool, and the Cambium dataset, which includes CFE projections through 2050. New developments in federal procurement will be discussed as well, such as utility CFE purchase memorandums of understanding, EAC purchasing requirements, and new methodologies for calculating Grid Mix CFE.
Managing Your Load for Money and Energy Security: Demand Response and Time-Variable Pricing
Participants will learn about demand response programs/opportunities, time-variable pricing, and the latest FEMP national survey of demand response programs. Workshop time will be split between technical experts teaching participants about demand response and time-variable pricing and highlighting real-world experience.
Energy and Water Treasure Hunts: Saving Energy While Decarbonizing Your Facility
FEMP provides a free, two-to-three day, guided training event known as Treasure Hunts that assist agencies in strategically meeting their energy and water operations and maintenance (O&M) efficiency goals through identification, quantification, and implementation of low-to-no-cost energy savings measures. This continuous improvement process utilizes onsite non-technical and technical staff to identify non-capital investment energy efficiency improvements within a facility. Treasure Hunts empower attendees to train other staff members and foster a culture of continuous improvement leading to a reduction of O&M costs and associated greenhouse gas emissions.
Building Re-Tuning: Learn How To Use FEMP's Building Re-Tuning Simulator
This workshop will provide an overview of re-tuning, which is a systematic process to identify operational problems by leveraging data collected from the building automation systems. Learn how FEMP's Building Re-Tuning Simulator (BRS) tool can be leveraged to help meet agency goals and optimize operations, improve comfort, reduce energy use, and support decarbonization efforts. The low- and no-cost re-tuning measures that will be introduced in this workshop can provide savings ranging from 5% to 25% with a simple payback of 0.3 to 3.5 years.
Track 3: Resilient and Secure Infrastructure and Facilities
Don't Get Rocked by a Hurricane: Using the TRN Lite to Enhance Resilience at Your Site
Planning can help reduce uncertainty, facilitate coordination, and drive performance—and resilience planning is no different. Resilience planning and implementation of identified solutions can help federal facilities to continue critical missions in the event of a disruption or return to service faster. But many staff don't know where to start or how to prioritize future investments. Attend this workshop to explore FEMP's new Technical Resilience Navigator (TRN) Lite, a streamlined resilience planning tool that aims to help facility staff answer these questions and identify potential resilience solutions to address their biggest risk drivers. Bring your data to complete a TRN Lite assessment at the training or leverage example cases to show the diversity of sites, hazards, and potential solutions the TRN Lite can assist with.
How to Fund Resilience at Federal Facilities
This workshop will discuss funding options for implementing resilience solutions, including performance contracts, utility partnerships, grants, and unique appropriation options. Instructors will highlight GSA Areawide Public Utility Contracts, resilience tariffs, the Energy Resilience and Conservation Investment Program, and FEMP AFFECT grants. Attendees will explore resilience valuation, identify barriers, and provide feedback on how FEMP could better support federal resilience efforts.
Advancing Distributed Energy Resources Cybersecurity Research and Development
FEMP offers a suite of cybersecurity assessment tools aimed at reducing distributed energy resource (DER) cybersecurity risk, including the Distributed Energy Resource Cybersecurity Framework (DER-CF), the Distributed Energy Resources Risk Manager (DER-RM), and the Distributed Energy Resources Visual Emulator (DER-VE). These tools allow agencies to easily and intuitively follow cybersecurity risk management framework processes, manage the risks to their grid-edge infrastructure, visualize static cybersecurity risks and their compliance, and comply with Authority to Operate requirements. The workshop will include an in-depth demonstration of the DER-CF, DER-RM, and DER-VE capabilities and train attendees in leveraging these resources and advancing distributed energy cybersecurity risk management and compliance.
The (Cyber) Team With the Best Defense Wins: Enhancing Facility Cybersecurity Through Network Defense
Federal facilities need to ensure they have a robust cybersecurity posture—but ensuring your network, and the devices on it, can be protected from malicious attacks isn't easy. Attend this workshop to better understand how to defend your network by mitigating attacks. This workshop will feature an interactive, network defense game to let you visualize four consecutive attacks in which the attacker will respond to your every move. Can you mitigate vulnerabilities and deploy the right controls to keep the attacker from crippling your system?
Track 4: Technologies to Meet Agency Energy, Water, and Climate Goals
Using 50001 Ready To Meet Your Decarbonization Goals
DOE's 50001 Ready program is a self-guided approach for facilities to establish an energy management system and self-attest to the structure of ISO 50001. The 50001 Ready program offers a self-paced approach, guidance to identify and analyze facility-wide energy use and develop action plans around energy performance improvements, and DOE recognition for U.S. facilities that self-attest to the completion of the 50001 Ready Navigator. This workshop introduces key 50001-based energy management systems concepts.
Advanced Metering for Decarbonization: Electric Vehicles and Carbon Pollution-Free Electricity
Attend this workshop to learn more about advanced metering best practices for meeting the goals of EO 14057. This session will kick off with presentations on FEMP best practices for metering with a special focus on EVs and EV charging station electricity use and integrating data sources to calculate hourly CFE. The presentation will be followed by facilitated small group discussions with an interactive problem-solving activity.
REopt® Workshop
This workshop will include an overview and hands-on training with REopt®, a techno-economic modeling tool for cost-optimal sizing and dispatch of distributed energy resources toward energy cost savings, resilience, and decarbonization goals. This workshop will be useful for new and advanced users, including an overview of the tool, updates on new capabilities, and a hands-on tutorial. During the hands-on tutorial, participants will use REopt to evaluate solar and storage at a hypothetical site for cost savings, resilience, and decarbonization goals. The tutorial will feature several exciting new capabilities, including integration of grid emissions data, the Energy Resilience and Performance (ERP) tool, and portfolio analysis in REopt.
Conducting an Energy and Indoor Environmental Quality Audit From Sensor Selection to Data Analysis
Learn about FEMP's success in conducting remote energy and indoor environmental quality (IEQ) audits at various federal facilities. The workshop will cover sensor selection, tips for conducting an audit, data analysis, and how to use the data to plan for future building upgrades. During the workshop, attendees will have the opportunity for hands-on practice launching various data loggers and retrieving data for analysis.
Track 5: Public-Private Partnership for Federal Projects
New Gen 4 FEMP-DOE ESPC IDIQ Contract—Updates, Best Practices, and New Resources
DOE's Energy Savings Performance Contract (ESPC) IDIQ helps agencies partner with energy services companies to increase energy efficiency and cut maintenance costs for federally owned buildings. This workshop will cover the new Gen4 DOE ESPC IDIQ contract, highlighting changes and updates from prior generations. Topic areas include key changes, best practices, and new and updated resources available to all stakeholders (federal agencies, energy service companies, project facilitators) supporting ESPCs under the Gen 4 contract.
Performance Contracting Lessons Learned: Peer-To-Peer Discussion
This session will focus on peer-to-peer discussion, providing attendees with the opportunity to share lessons learned, explore ongoing challenges, and identify solutions for meeting energy goals through performance contracting. Topic areas will cover centralized performance contracting strategies and portfolio management, policy/contracting/technical barriers, and project development best practices.
Getting Started With Your Performance Contract—Acquisition Planning and Contractor Selection
This workshop will step through guidance and best practices for federal agencies during the acquisition planning phase of a performance contract. Topic areas include navigating acquisition planning considerations for your letter of interest (utility energy service contract) or notice of opportunity (ESPC and ENABLE) such as project phasing; considerations for reserve accounts, leveraging appropriations, initiating a project with or without a preliminary assessment, use of the FEMP ESCO Selector Tools (ESPC and ENABLE), and considerations for contractor selection.
Utility Energy Service Contract (UESC) Performance Assurance in Action
This workshop will focus on developing performance assurance plans to ensure long-term performance and savings from energy conservation measures (ECM) in a UESC. Attendees will participate in an activity to review an example Performance Assurance Plan to understand the fundamental elements and identify key considerations for developing requirements related to ECM baselines, commissioning, measurement/verification, training, and post-acceptance O&M.
Track 6: Energy-Intensive Facilities and Fleet Electrification
Take the Guesswork Out of the Fleet Electrification Transition Process
Unlock the full benefits of your vehicle's data and right-size the electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure your fleet needs. This workshop will dive into energy requirement calculations, identify the key considerations to design a charging strategy and use EVI-LOCATE for cost estimates of electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) deployments.
Smart Labs: Improving Lab Facilities To Meet Decarbonization Goals
Smart Labs enable safe and efficient world class science to occur in laboratories through high-performance methods. The Smart Labs Toolkit describes a systematic process to help laboratory owners and operators plan, assess, optimize, and manage laboratory facilities. This half-day workshop reviews the four phases of the Smart Labs Toolkit along with an interactive activity to complete a Laboratory Ventilation Risk Assessment. This session will also highlight the Lab Benchmarking Tool, which compares the energy use, emissions, and operational practices of lab buildings with similar facilities. Attendees will also discuss application as well as sharing tools and best practice guides.