Methods and apparatus to track, visualize and understand energy and utilities usage

Techniques disclosed herein include systems and methods for tracking, visualizing and understanding energy or utilities usage of one or many buildings. The system links building characteristics with energy or utilities use thereby enabling users to view energy or utilities usage and cost information at the portfolio, development, building, or meter levels. This technique allows for easy comparison among and between buildings in a portfolio, group, or common ownership. The system provides for quick creation of custom reports to compare buildings across portfolios. These custom reports further enable users to compare energy/utilities use of buildings within a given account relative to energy/utilities use of similar buildings in a larger database, thus providing meaningful performance benchmarking based on real data.