How can energy data extend the lifespan of buildings?

It is a well-known fact that our buildings account for approximately 40% of our energy consumption. For many years we have also talked about EMS (Energy Monitoring Systems) and how every building has enormous potential to save energy.

In 2019, the rollout of smart meters began, which the contributor hoped would be a unique tool for energy management – so that not only the largest and newest buildings would have this. Knowing that 80% of the building stock will still exist in 2050, we also need to bring existing buildings along.

This is not something we can build our way out of – we need to be proactive and think about the existing building stock.

Smart meters today help electricity companies easily share information about meter readings and simplify the process of transferring customers between companies. They also give you the ability to see how much energy you use per hour. This is currently delayed data, meaning you get to see your energy consumption today, tomorrow.

This has given us easily accessible data about energy consumption, but there are two disadvantages.

Historical data versus real-time data

The first disadvantage is that we don't have real-time information. Energy in commercial buildings today is often managed according to the size of your peak load. So using a lot of energy in one hour can make a big difference to the electricity bill, and possibly also cause problems for your neighbourhood if you share the same transformer station. Being told tomorrow that there was extreme consumption at 08:00 yesterday is like being told tomorrow that you were going to fall off the ladder today.

Consumption when you look at it at hourly level tends to look like this. Here nothing looks particularly abnormal. The building uses the most energy between 06:00 and 18:00 in line with the usage pattern of the tenant and technical equipment. This is the type of information we have always had available. The disadvantage here is that we only see values every hour.

Smart meters have given us HAN

So even though smart meters only collect data every hour in the cloud, they have given us "a straw" for the real value. All meters have received a HAN port. HAN stands for "Home Area Network" and can easily give us detailed data about everything happening in the building. What is particularly interesting here is real-time electricity consumption – i.e. the instantaneous power we are drawing.

The power we can read from a meter like this shows us how much energy we are actually using at this exact second. If we go back to the same image we had of the hourly values, we then see a completely different picture of this building. The building that looked completely healthy is actually a sick building.

This picture gives us a more accurate picture of the building, and what is striking is how the building uses double, and in periods triple, the instantaneous power. If we zoom further down into the data it doesn't look any better.

When we get down to this level, with a bit of background knowledge we can quickly understand that there is a large load switching in and out constantly. Such a "staircase pattern" indicates that the electric boiler in this building is switching in and out at 5-minute intervals. An electric boiler is often the primary or secondary heat source in a building with water-borne heating. It typically consists of several stages so that it can find the optimal temperature. What we see here is simply a misprogrammed electric boiler that is switching in and out, which will result in a relatively expensive and important component that will not reach its expected lifespan.

This is information we have generally never had before, and new technology – the concept of "proptech" and property technology – is the collective term for the technological growth we are now seeing in our commercial buildings. This gives us a true picture of how our buildings are actually being managed.

We have a unique opportunity that means all buildings out there can easily get an energy monitoring system. According to Enova, EMS will give us savings of between 3–5% (sometimes more) by revealing faults in operations and technical systems as early as possible. In addition, one typically sees energy savings of 5–10% through simple measures. Enova also believes that with the EMS tool, operations personnel can uncover and document poor solutions, propose operational improvements, participate in planning changes, review measures and demonstrate their own role far better than without EMS.

Proptech enables us to work more sustainably – this is yet another example showing that Proptech + Sustainability = True.

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