Background Story
A commercial office building in a bustling urban center, home to multiple tenants across several floors, faced challenges with rising energy costs and increasing demand for sustainability practices. The building’s tenants operated in diverse industries, and each had varying energy needs. However, there was no centralized system to efficiently manage energy usage across the entire property.
To address these challenges, the building owner sought to implement a real-time digital energy monitoring platform with tenant billing. The goal was to optimize energy consumption, enhance tenant billing transparency, and support the building’s overall sustainability objectives.
Problems
The building encountered several key energy management issues:
- Inefficient Energy Consumption: Areas such as shared HVAC systems, lighting, and equipment in common areas were running inefficiently, leading to high energy consumption
- Limited Control Over Energy Usage: The building lacked a system to monitor energy consumption in real-time, making it challenging to implement energy-saving measures effectively
- Tenant Billing: Facility Managers were utilizing manual readings to calculate tenant consumption and costs, which is prone to human error and requires a lot of time
- Sustainability Pressure: Increasing sustainability regulations required a robust system to track and report on energy usage and carbon emissions across the building
Main Objective
The primary goal of the project was to implement a suite of our super modules that could:
- Provide real-time monitoring of energy consumption across common areas
- Optimize energy consumption across the building, particularly in shared systems like HVAC and lighting
- Introduce a transparent billing system based on accurate energy usage data
- Improve the building sustainability performance
Approach
To ensure appropriate tracking of energy consumption:
- Digitalization Assessment: Assessment of the existing digital infrastructure and identifying digitalization gaps crucial for ensuring the objectives
- ITOT Integration: Smart meters submeters and sensors were installed were connected to the platform via API allowing facility managers to access detailed consumption patterns and trends as well as tenant consumption
- Cloud-Based Data Integration: Energy data from sensors was transmitted to a secure, cloud-based platform, allowing facility managers to access detailed consumption patterns and trends indefinitely
- AI-Driven Analytics and Alerts: Machine learning algorithms analyzed energy patterns, detecting anomalies and predicting equipment failures before they occurred
- Energy Dashboarding: The system provided targeted energy dashboards to keep track of relevant and problematic equipment
- Chargeback Workflow: The platform automatically calculates tenant costs based on a set workflow utilizing live submetering readings
- Automated Carbon Reporting and Compliance: The platform automatically calculated and logged carbon emissions data, generating reports aligned with government and industry sustainability standards
- User Training: Facility operators and energy managers were trained to effectively use the system, interpret data insights, and implement energy-saving measures
Results
The company achieved substantial improvements in both energy efficiency and operational performance:
- 7% Reduction in Energy Consumption: By optimizing shared systems and reducing inefficiencies, the building saved significantly on energy costs
- Accurate and Transparent Tenant Billing: Tenants received clear, real-time billing reports
- Streamlined Carbon Reporting: Automated energy tracking improved sustainability reporting and regulatory compliance