Monitoring in Real Time

Most boards are probably familiar with building management systems. But they may not know much about energy management platforms. Can you explain the difference? 

With a building management system, or BMS, there are sensors on various pieces of equipment in the building that monitor things like temperature and the operation of motors, pumps and fans. If adjustments need to be made or there’s a disruption, alerts are sent out to the supers through an app on their cellphone so they can make corrections. With an energy management platform, however, information from the various sensors is fed into an online platform, and micro-adjustments are made to systems remotely and in real time, which saves energy. It is more proactive than a traditional building management system because you can identify faults ahead of time before they become a problem that affects residents. It allows you to really get the maximum benefit out of your existing system. 

Does an energy management platform run 24/7, even making adjustments without a building’s super being involved? 

Correct. An energy management platform can make adjustments at 2 a.m. or at peak times during the day when the super is busy doing regular day-to-day activities or dealing with other pertinent issues. It runs seamlessly in the background, and the super doesn’t even need to be involved. But if a building system runs outside of its parameters or expected values, an alert is sent out so the super is aware of it. I should add that while our system works on preprogrammed algorithms, we also have a team of intelligence engineers who can make adjustments if needed. While that is mostly done remotely from our cloud-based platform, we are also able to get them on-site if that’s required.

What kind of building is a good candidate for this service? Does it benefit a little six-story building with just a boiler, or do you have to have more complicated systems?

There really isn’t a lower or upper limit. Any building could find value, from smaller co-ops to very large ones as well. We set up a system that is unique to each property. Through baselining and an initial walk-through, we determine the savings we’re able to generate annually through the lifetime of the contract, which is typically five years. We meet with the building periodically, typically every quarter, to go over how the system is performing. If our platform is unable to deliver on the amount of savings we guarantee, we will make up the shortfall to the customer. The bottom line is whether we’re fine-tuning existing controls or adding our own to make a system more advanced, there is always more that can be done to optimize your building systems.