Leveraging Advanced Analytics to Improve Thermal Comfort and Energy Consumption

Today, there is a lot of talk in the commercial building industry about advanced analytics. As new analytics providers offer facilities managers solutions to maintain thermal comfort for all occupants while also keeping their energy consumption reasonable, the fact remains that not all solutions are created equal. If your tenants are complaining about the temperature or their high energy bills or both, consider upgrading to an advanced analytics system. 

Using Advanced Analytics to Improve Thermal Comfort and Energy Consumption

Achieving thermal comfort and energy consumption goals may seem like competing endeavors, however, they can actually be achieved simultaneously by leveraging advanced analytics. Intelligent analytics provide actionable recommendations for facilities managers concerning their operations and equipment—enabling them to make informed decisions and adjustments as necessary to manage costs and comfort concurrently.

Advanced analytics can help facilities managers with the following: 

Access data more easily from anywhere

Intelligent analytics provides proactive, comprehensive system monitoring, enabling managers to view data at any time and optimize equipment operations to reduce energy consumption as well as monitor thermal comfort continuously.   

The most cutting-edge software includes:

• A centralized dashboard interface with mobile access and comprehensive analytics compiled by the system in a meaningful way.

• An easy way for owners and managers to retrieve and interact with data such as temperature setpoints and occupancy levels. Software should enable the user to adjust setpoints automatically or to manually reconfigure equipment to respond to any operational building system concerns.

Identifying waste, cost savings, and improvement areas

Advanced analytics offer significant opportunities to identify waste areas, gain deeper understanding of operational costs, and achieve actual cost savings. By leveraging expert analytics and machine learning algorithms to evaluate improvement areas, facilities managers can take the appropriate steps to ensure their building is more cost and energy-efficient.

Advanced analytics also helps facilities managers reach specific building performance and sustainability goals. An experienced partner offering a comprehensive solution will not only provide advanced analytics, but also provide the integration, monitoring, and controls to help facilities managers alleviate waste, reduce carbon footprints, and better manage equipment maintenance.

• Fault detection and diagnostics (FDD) that prioritize insights and alarms from various building systems, trigger automated adjustments, and suggest actionable solutions.
• Configurable and customizable FDD and KPIs to meet your specific needs. A one size fits all approach usually fits no one. An advanced solution should allow users to customize and extend the solution for their use cases and systems.

The Advantages of Advanced Analytics

There are multiple advantages to leveraging advanced analytics for your building portfolio, including:

• Thermal adjustments. Temperature and humidity levels can be adjusted according to variables such as extreme temperatures, near-real-time occupancy, and seasonality.
• Preventative maintenance. Make sure your systems are operating in a streamlined way, and if not, determine the next steps required based on the data provided. 
• Determine the root cause of the issue. Intelligent analytics applied by an expert controls partner can diagnose the true issue behind thermal comfort and energy consumption concerns.
• Ensure efficiency doesn’t compromise comfort. Building managers want to enhance the energy efficiency of their building, but that can’t come at the price of the thermal comfort of occupants. Use data to find the balance between thermal comfort and energy efficiency through demand based optimization.
• Implement effective building energy management. Advanced analytics platforms help analyze BMS data related to major energy-consuming building operations and determine actionable changes to reduce onsite energy and achieve peak efficiency. A system that can employ machine learning algorithms to evaluate and mine data can uncover historical patterns and detect concerns related to excess energy consumption and equipment vulnerabilities. This enables facilities managers to quickly implement corrective action before major breakdowns or more concerning energy bills stack up. You can also establish energy goals based on this knowledge and track your consumption and waste reduction on a long-term basis.  
• Connect your indoor air quality (IAQ) equipment and sensors via a smart analytics and reporting system—By connecting your IAQ systems, HVAC, ventilation, and sensors into a central reporting system, facilities managers can ensure continuous visibility into the thermal comfort and indoor air quality status of indoor spaces. An expert partner can integrate IAQ sensors within monitoring and reporting systems to sense pollutants, particulate matter, and toxins like CO2, carbon monoxide, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), ensuring WELL Building standards for operation are proactively and continually achieved. Preparing a return-to-work strategy and managing occupancy and clean air concerns is simplified with an intelligent analytics provider that can help manage commercial buildings in a more productive way.
• Ensure sustainable building environments—Improving a building’s sustainability and productivity through analytics and automation can produce efficient and healthy results for occupants and owners. Advanced analytics:

• Help ensure sustainability goals are adequately met.
• Continuously collect and analyze information via data tagging, modeling, and through the use of machine learning algorithms applied to building systems.
• Enable facilities managers to provide active reports to stakeholders via a single-pane-of-glass dashboard.
• Include real-time details related to heating and cooling, ventilation, and connected building management systems.
• Empower users to make automatic or manual adjustments to optimize a building’s sustainability and reach occupant’s thermal comfort goals. 

Working With an Advanced Analytics, Integration, and Controls Expert

An advanced analytics, integration, and controls expert like Buildings IoT will offer you leading-edge, smart building cloud solutions. From secure onPoint cloud-based analytics to complex integrated building systems with seamless automation and controls, a data-driven expert will enable your building’s portfolio to thrive, with improved occupancy comfort, IAQ, sustainability, and energy consumption.

With a facilities management dashboard, Buildings IOT provides a combined solution called onPoint to maximize your return on investment and provide a safer return-to-work strategy for occupants. With Buildings IOT solutions, you can substantially improve your thermal comfort and energy consumption while providing smart mobile access and custom reporting to your valuable stakeholders.

Buildings IOT offers the services and technologies you need to address thermal comfort and energy efficiencies. Contact our team of experts today.