Software as a service has become increasingly popular in the energy world, with startups like Planet Metrics and Hara popping up to help companies cut carbon emissions. The newest contender is Scientific Conservation, a startup that wants to bring SaaS to building automation energy efficiency. The company, which emerged from stealth mode yesterday, shills a web-based platform called SCIWatch that links into a building's automation system to automatically predict, detect, diagnose, prioritize and monetize system faults and anomalies in air conditioning systems, heating, and so on.

As a result, SCIWatch cuts "energy drift"--a process attributed to electrical, mechanical, and HVAC system faults that causes commercial buildings to lose 17% in energy efficiency every two years. Average electricity costs run at $2 per square foot, so that means countless amounts of cash lost to inefficiency. But Scientific Conservation claims that its software, which combines a universal interface, a data warehouse, a fault prediction diagnostic engine, and a work module that tracks job tickets for problems that require fiing, can help commercial building owners cut annual energy use by 25%. 

The software is already in use by a number of companies, including Neiman Marcus, Harley Davidson, and Santa Clara County, California.  In one Santa Clara building, SCIWatch helped provide $126,000 in energy savings yearly as well as a $93,000 electric company rebate. Now that SCIWatch has been officially announced, Scientific Conservation is poised to take a big piece of the $4.5 billion commercial building market--especially since the company is the first to provide a SaaS that automatically deals with building automation inefficiencies.

[Scientific Conservation]

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