February 19, 2020 Environment & Sustainability

The Case For Trellis

Georges River Council

About Georges River Council

Georges River Council in NSW was created on 12th May 2016 through the merging of the former Hurstville and Kogarah City Councils. The Council boundaries provide services to 150,000 residents in the southern suburbs of Sydney.

Working with Trellis Technologies

Georges River Council, once formed elected to expand the coverage of the data management services provided by Trellis Technologies. PDF electricity, gas and water bills are automatically captured and processed to provide reporting and analysis on the consumption and cost trends of these utilities.

Identifying anomalies in consumption and cost

All PDF and other utility data files are captured to directly read all charge amounts from the electricity, gas and water bills for Georges River Council.

With over 250 facilities administered, inclusive of 120 electricity accounts, 120 water accounts and 20 gas accounts this service eliminates the need for Council Environmental staff to request the billing data from their finance team when exploring issues and to commence the laborious task of keying in the individual billing data to enable the analysis and reporting required.

Reporting Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Trellis contains all required Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions factors for reporting consistently with the National Greenhouse and Energy Act 2007 and National Carbon Offset Standard requirements. Importantly, these are updated by the team at Trellis each year to ensure calculations are maintained in accordance with Australian Standards and Legislation.

Reporting and Analysis

In addition to standard reports in the Trellis interface, tailored quarterly reports are provided to Georges River Council tracking their progress in emissions, energy and cost reductions throughout the year.

The quarterly reports contain the following information:

  • Comparison of quarterly performance to the same quarter in the prior year
  • General trends in total emissions, energy and cost for the quarter and in comparison to historical data
  • Anomalies and unexpected bills received
  • Data gaps
  • Analysis of the top ten water, gas and electricity consuming sites and their relative performance to the same period in the prior year
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