GridPoint

Power supply is critical to Five Star Call Centers. They’ve built a solid reputation for providing consistent, reliable, and friendly customer care, and a loss of power could wreak havoc on their business. To prevent service disruptions, the company has an uninterruptible power supply on-site, as well as a backup generator.The generator was necessary, but almost never used, and there were monthly expenses to maintain it. GridPoint recognized the opportunity to help Five Star turn an idle resource into a revenue-producing, grid-interactive asset.

Ampler Holdings, a quick-service restaurant platform owning 347 restaurants, including over 80 Burger King locations, was facing a series of challenges related to energy management. The company had no Energy Management System in place, leading to inconsistent operational control and unnecessary energy use, such as lights being left on overnight. There was also a lack of automation for energy needs, resulting in situations like dining room lights not being turned on in the morning. The HVAC set points were inefficient and lacked standardization, and there was no visibility into the health of the HVAC systems. These challenges were exacerbated by the fact that Ampler had assembled its portfolio of restaurants in a relatively short timeframe, and was therefore focused on operational improvements and insights.

The Minnesota-based national retail chain, with nearly 2000 stores and 50 supply chain facilities across the US, was committed to achieving net zero by 2040. To reach this goal, the retailer had been implementing energy-saving strategies in their existing and new store designs since the 1990s. However, they faced challenges in managing their path to net zero. They were using utility bill data, engineering estimates, and energy modeling to plan, implement, and validate capital investments in energy-consuming assets and confirm ongoing operational efficiency. However, they lacked clear benchmarks for success. Additionally, they were deploying significant refrigeration equipment as part of their strategy to bring fresh groceries to every store, but they did not have a portfolio-wide view of energy-consuming assets to measure the full impact on energy usage. They needed an enterprise platform that provides asset-level, real-time data to support this deployment.