The building sector offers plenty of opportunities to improve energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It is estimated that cost-effective technologies have the potential to cut down building energy usage by more than 20% by 2030. Building energy management through Internet-of-Things (IoT) is one of the most effective ways to integrate, optimize, and control energy consumption by various systems in a smart building. With a smart building platform that enables IoT energy management, building owners, facility managers, and other stakeholders can adopt a strategic approach to reduce electricity bills in a building.
The metrics for measuring energy performance within commercial buildings can vary depending on the purpose—designing, commissioning, or ongoing operations. However, for effective building energy management, there needs to be a standard method for measuring and characterizing the energy performance of a building.
The data on fundamental metrics such as electrical demand, monthly and annual purchased energy, and facility energy production can be gathered through utility bills and building drawings and do not require additional metering equipment. Though these metrics can help determine a facility’s annual energy consumption, they may or may not accurately describe a building’s energy performance. This is where IoT energy management comes in.
IoT sensors continuously capture real-time data for a more accurate analysis of energy performance. With IoT devices, facility managers can get detailed insights into active energy consumption by various building operations.
IoT sensors stream seasonal, daily, hourly, and sub-hourly data on which equipment is using energy and when. The real-time data improves the accuracy of a building’s energy.
Energy management powered by IoT devices is based on performance metrics. These metrics can be compared against benchmarks to evaluate performance and verify whether a building has accomplished its energy performance targets.
IoT devices can help determine the load signature of a building and the equipment responsible for higher energy consumption during peak demand times. This further translates into making necessary tradeoffs such as shedding load to minimize utility demand during peak hours.
IoT technology enables buildings with onsite renewable energy reserves or distributed energy resources (DER) to take operations “off the grid” when high-power consumption intersects with peak times. IoT enables buildings to monitor and communicate their energy requirements to utilities more easily.
With IoT devices, you can determine the equipment responsible for higher energy consumption than required, thereby taking a proactive and preventive maintenance approach to avoid energy wastage.
IoT energy management solutions can save up to 70% on electricity bills, and the flexibility to go off the grid as needed can help you save even more. To realize the benefits of IoT in energy management, commercial buildings need a building system expert to review their premises and create a custom solution to improve energy efficiency.
At Buildings IOT, we are a dedicated team of building system experts helping owners and facility managers achieve greater energy efficiency and meet energy goals for their buildings. We develop and deploy cloud-based smart building solutions such as onPoint to create IoT energy management systems that make sense both economically and environmentally.
With onPoint, facility managers, energy managers, and building owners gain better control over energy demand to improve the efficiency of buildings. The real-time, accurate data provided by the platform not only helps identify equipment contributing to higher energy but also suggests solutions to resolve the issue and optimize energy usage in a building. With improved energy performance through the smart building platform, buildings can realize significant cost savings in their day-to-day operations.