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Case study · Energy management

Every building's energy use, explained by the hour

An energy services company installed meters and sensors in commercial buildings and sent customers a monthly spreadsheet. This is how we turned that data into a SaaS product: dashboards for every site, alerts when energy is wasted, and reports a sustainability team can publish.

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Project overview

A SaaS product on time-series data.

Industry
Energy management
Client
Confidential
Solution
Energy monitoring SaaS
Platform
React and Python on AWS
Timeline
24–32 weeks
Team
6 people
Data
Half-hourly meter and sensor readings
Billing
Per site, per month
Users
Facilities and sustainability teams

Expected business outcomes

What the client set out to achieve

The product is worth its fee only if customers use less energy because of it.

  • 8–15% Lower energy use in monitored buildings

    Waste outside occupied hours is found and fixed.

    Target range reported by customers in their first year; depends on them acting on alerts

  • Hours To notice abnormal consumption

    Alerts compare each building with its own normal pattern.

    Previously found on the monthly bill

  • Days → minutes To produce a sustainability report

    Reports are generated from validated data.

    For standard reporting periods

Business challenges

Where the client started

The data was collected. Nobody could use it.

Reports

A monthly spreadsheet per building, emailed to the customer.

Data

Readings from several meter brands in different formats.

Waste

Heating and lighting left running overnight, noticed weeks later.

Customers

Sustainability teams compiling reports by hand.

Business model

One-off installation income, with no recurring revenue.

Proposed solution

What the product covers

Clean data first, then the views each user needs.

  • Data ingestion

    Readings from meters and sensors, validated and gap-filled.

  • Site dashboards

    Consumption by building, floor and system, by the hour.

  • Waste alerts

    Alerts when a building uses more than its normal pattern.

  • Targets and benchmarks

    Buildings compared with each other and with their targets.

  • Reports

    Carbon and energy reports for standard frameworks.

  • Per-site subscriptions

    Customers add sites and users themselves.

Project requirements

What the client asked us for

The request was a portal. The business goal was recurring revenue, which meant a product customers would open every week, not a place to download the same spreadsheet.

Data quality came first. A dashboard built on missing or duplicated readings loses a facilities manager's trust the first time it is wrong.

What the project had to deliver

  • 01Energy use shown by the hour
  • 02Alerts on waste, not just totals
  • 03Reports ready to publish
  • 04A subscription per site

Key challenges & considerations

What made it harder, and what we did

  1. Meters from many manufacturers

    What we did

    An adapter was written for each meter type, turning every reading into one common format.

  2. Gaps and spikes in the readings

    What we did

    Gaps and spikes were detected, corrected by agreed rules and recorded, so every figure could be traced.

  3. Buildings with very different normal patterns

    What we did

    Each building was compared with its own normal pattern for the hour and the day, not with a fixed limit.

  4. Customers with hundreds of sites

    What we did

    Portfolio views and bulk setup were built for customers with hundreds of sites.

What we watched for

  • Validate data before showing it
  • Compare each building with itself
  • Tune alerts to avoid noise
  • Check figures against real bills

Development process

Trustworthy data, then the dashboards

Pilot customers checked the figures against their own bills before launch.

  1. Stage 1

    Data audit

    Every meter type and data source catalogued.

  2. Stage 2

    Ingestion and validation

    Pipelines with checks, gap-filling and an audit of corrections.

  3. Stage 3

    Dashboards

    Site and portfolio views built with facilities managers.

  4. Stage 4

    Alerts

    Normal patterns learned per building, then alerts tuned.

  5. Stage 5

    Reports and billing

    Standard reports and per-site subscriptions.

  6. Stage 6

    Launch

    Pilot customers first, then every site.

Technology stack

Time-series data, served fast

Storage and queries designed for readings, not for records.

Front end

  • React
  • TypeScript
  • Charting

Data

  • Python pipelines
  • Time-series database
  • Anomaly detection

Back end

  • Python
  • PostgreSQL
  • AWS

Platform

  • Data quality checks
  • Automated tests
  • CI/CD
  • Monitoring

Quality assurance & deployment

Tested as a product many customers share

A SaaS product is one codebase serving every customer, so a defect reaches all of them at once. Tenant isolation, billing and upgrades were tested as deliberately as the features.

  • Automated unit and API tests, run on every change
  • Tenant isolation tests: one customer can never see another's data
  • Billing, plan and permission scenarios tested end to end
  • Code review by a second engineer before anything was merged
  • Load tests at the expected number of tenants and users

Deployment

  • 01Reports and billingStandard reports and per-site subscriptions.
  • 02LaunchPilot customers first, then every site.
  • 03Releases without downtimeUpdates shipped behind feature flags, with database changes that can be rolled back.
  • 04Monitoring and warrantyUptime, errors and usage per tenant monitored from day one, and six months of free bug fixing.

Final deliverables

Data customers open every week

Facilities managers now see what each building used yesterday and are told when something is running that should not be. Sustainability teams produce their reports in minutes.

The client has moved from one-off installation income to a subscription for every monitored site.

  • Validated data from every meter
  • Hourly views per building
  • Alerts on abnormal use
  • Reports generated on demand
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Handed over to the client

  • 01Production SaaS platformMulti-tenant, deployed and monitored
  • 02Source codeIn a repository the client can access
  • 03Billing and admin consolePlans, tenants and permissions
  • 04Test suite and pipelineIncluding tenant isolation tests
  • 05Six-month warrantyFree bug fixing after delivery

Success metrics

How success is measured

MeasureOutcomeHow it is measured
Lower energy use in monitored buildings 8–15% Target range reported by customers in their first year; depends on them acting on alerts
To notice abnormal consumption Hours Previously found on the monthly bill
To produce a sustainability report Days → minutes For standard reporting periods

Verified reviews

What clients say about our SaaS development work

Verified reviews from our clients on the same kind of work, published on Clutch.

5.0 27 verified reviews
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