Title
Vote to approve competitive bid exemption and sole source under North Carolina G.S. 143-129(e)(6) for Enpira for utility data collection and management
Abstract
Introduction & Background: The County does not currently track energy, water, or fuel use. Staff have access to this data but does not manage the data in a way that makes it possible to spot trends and identify efficiency opportunities. As part of the fiscal year 2025 budget, funds were approved to hire a utility data management contractor to perform this function.
Discussion & Analysis: There are several companies, including Enpira, who offer software for managing energy and utility data in a meaningful way. However, Enpira offers the additional service of collecting the monthly billing data themselves and entering the data into a database. This makes them unique to this space. One of the criteria for designating a vendor as a sole source is if they offer a needed product that is only available from one source. Chatham County does not have the staff resources to either manually input the monthly data or compile and upload the monthly data to a company's website, so the value-added service offered by Enpira is necessary.
In addition, Enpira is a small, local company, headquartered in Cary. They work with a number of our neighboring local governments, including Chapel Hill, Durham County, Morrisville, and Orange County, and have specific knowledge collecting data from and interacting with Duke Energy and Dominion Energy, two of our largest utility providers. Another criteria for designating a vendor as sole-source is when standardization or compatibility is an overriding concern. Duke Energy, in particular, has been a challenging company from which to get data, so Enpira's experience with this will be very useful.
How does this relate to the Comprehensive Plan: Tracking and managing our utility data is a pre-requisite to several of the strategies under Resiliency Policy 3: Increase energy...
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