“As building monitoring becomes more common, facilities teams are faced with an overwhelming amount of data. These data do not typically lead to insights or corrective actions unless they are stored, organized, analyzed, and prioritized in automated ways. Buildings are full of energy savings potential that can be uncovered with the right analysis. With analytic software applied to everyday building operations, owners are using data to their advantage and realizing cost savings through improved energy management.”
Thus begins Proving the Business Case for Building Analytics, which reports the results of the 2016-2020 Smart Energy Analytics Campaign, which was designed to “assess the costs, benefits, and common practices of EMIS [Energy Management and Information Systems] when installed at scale across a wide array of building types and sizes.”
The campaign engaged 104 organizations, across many market sectors and portfolio sizes, comprising over 6,500 buildings totaling more than half a billion square feet of combined floor area.
As Jessica Granderson, Director of the Building Technology and Urban Systems Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and one of the report’s authors wrote previously in arcCA DIGEST,
Ensuring a just and equitable transition to a low-carbon economy is at the forefront of discussions that are unfolding at the federal, state, and local level. With nearly 40% of our energy-related emissions tied to operating our commercial, institutional and residential buildings, we are working toward solutions to rapidly deliver deep gains in energy efficiency, as well as clean electricity, and beneficial electrification. Building retrofits and equipment upgrades are widely recognized as savers, but most people are surprised to learn that buildings are full of hidden operational savings potential that can be uncovered with smart building software.
Facility managers and building owners are now reaping tremendous savings with energy management and information systems (EMIS) technology that provide analytics and control optimization to deliver no/low-cost savings, and healthy indoor air quality all year round – and with rapid payback. We are also using these technologies to coordinate building energy use and power demand with a low-carbon electricity supply, maximizing the use of energy at times of day when electrons are cleanest and most abundant. The future of buildings is smart, connected, and dynamic, and we are excited for recent advances in the state of smart building technology that are transforming how we operate our buildings.
You can read more about Lawrence Berkeley Lab’s work on EMIS technology and download the full Proving the Business Case for Building Analytics report here: https://smartenergyanalytics.org/.
