Data-Driven Savings: National Bank of Arizona's Energy Management Success Story

Use Case

Centralizing and proactively managing utility data across a complex, multi-location portfolio to improve visibility, reduce operational risk, and enable more efficient day-to-day operations.

Challenge

National Bank of Arizona struggled with limited visibility into its energy usage. Utility bills were processed by the central accounting department as a single expense for each location, with no itemization of electricity, natural gas, or water consumption. Energy issues were only addressed when accounting noticed unusual cost increases or when utility companies flagged anomalies. Investigating problems required labor-intensive manual research, and limited ability to perform year-over-year comparisons made budget forecasting difficult. The bank had no systematic way to identify energy savings opportunities, leaving potential cost reductions undetected.

Solution

After discovering Arcadia at a banking facilities forum, the National Bank of Arizona's SVP and Corporate Properties Department Manager partnered with Arcadia to implement their Utility Expense and Data Management solution. The Arcadia team, with the assistance of the Bank’s Corporate Properties department, gathered historical utility invoice data from all locations to establish performance baselines. Then the bank transferred all utility payments and data management responsibilities to the team. The Arcadia team implemented a user-friendly reporting interface that provided year-over-year consumption data down to the meter level. These detailed analytics supported business cases for sustainability initiatives and enabled the setup of alert systems to quickly identify consumption anomalies.

Benefits

The partnership with Arcadia delivered significant benefits for National Bank of Arizona. Data-driven analysis enabled the bank to say yes to a large solar panel installation project at the corporate headquarters center in Phoenix, AZ. Arcadia’s data provided business intelligence to secure approval for the solar panel installation by demonstrating that the project would quickly pay for itself. The Utility Expense and Data Management solution also allowed for quick anomaly resolution, including identifying a faulty electric meter that had caused a 187% increase in electricity expense, detecting a gas leak on a rooftop HVAC unit through unusual natural gas consumption patterns, and discovering a broken landscape line through water usage alerts. 

Enhanced visibility into energy usage enabled the implementation of additional sustainability initiatives, including more solar energy projects, lighting retrofits, and HVAC system upgrades. The bank also enjoyed improved operational efficiency through streamlined utility management.