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AEI Next Step

You've got a basic understanding of the relative EUI of several or all of your buildings, you're watching your main meters and you may have identified one or two buildings that need a deeper review. What next?

Let's work with what you have:

  • Lighting control system data may be available to help understand the impact of the lighting to the building's energy consumption.
  • Sub-metering zones or individual circuits with kWh meters or amperage loggers can help understand how lighting, plug or equipment loads are affecting the building’s energy consumption.
  • Building Automation Data is the Rosetta stone that can tell us how your HVAC equipment and industrial processes are related to energy consumption, how they are combined and scheduled to cause peak demand situations, and whether or not small scheduling changes can help to reduce energy during off-peak hours.

If the buildings that need more attention are equipped with any of the industry standard Building Automation Systems (BAS) from Johnson Controls, Honeywell, or the less popular and proprietary middleware solutions such as SkySpark, SiteSage, etc, we can learn a lot more about how your buildings are performing. At first we'll do a baseline review to make sure all sensors are calibrated, and then we can focus on building startup patterns, occupancy modes, and specific energy asset performance profiles. The answers to most questions, and the opportunity for tangible energy savings all lie in the data.

We don't need to look at every building, and we can focus on certain asset classes within a building. This isn't an all-or-nothing proposition; we tune our work to your budget and resources, and we let the data lead us to the logical Next Step of where the largest energy savings opportunities may be hiding. In our work, it's usually the case that a Soft Start review of several buildings at a facility points to a small subset of those buildings that need the extra attention. If you're starting from zero, it makes sense to first look at those buildings with the higher EUI. Even then, knowing your region and building types, we can further refine the effort to look at specific subsystems.

What's the Process?

Using a representative sample of your building automation data (one month or more), we disaggregate the sensors from the trend files to meta tag each to its functional role. We also group the sensors to their respective assets.

Once the sensors are tagged to their roles and assets, we can combine their data with known asset values like motor speeds, fan sizes, etc, to calculate whether the assets are operating to expectation, and to the industry standard best practices defined by NIST APAR, ASHRAE and AEE, as well as to your expectation of what it should cost to operate your building. For large assets like boilers and chillers, we'll create a cost-to-operate model that uses your BAS data to drive the calculations and see how those assets compare to the theoretical models.

Sounds expensive!

Not really! We are committed to ROI of under one year, and we can deliver O&M savings opportunities that are on the order of 3 to 7 pennies per square foot depending on what's available from the BAS.  According to a BOMA (Building Owners and Managers Association International) 2018 benchmarking report, the average utility costs for private sector office space is $2.14/ft2.  If there's a 5% savings to be had with simple O&M adjustments, that's worth $0.11/ft2.  So we know your math requires that building energy intelligence must be well below this threshold. Yes, we put CEM eyes on your facility in an aggressive way to learn how your facility is being operated, but once into a steady-state mode of Consistent Commissioning, only the exceptions to what has been prescribed and implemented will rise to the forefront in the form of weekly or monthly reporting that quickly isolates the conditions that warrant attention.

AEI Next Step is your scalable way into that steady-state world of Consistent Commissioning. Our commitment is to a triple bottom line proposition - lower energy costs, lower maintenance costs, and a more sustainable energy economy. If you operate a facility that engages the public such as a school or library, ask us about the fourth bottom line proposition of community engagement.

 

New AEI Energy Maps Just Released

We've just released public versions of our AEI Energy Maps for Los Angeles, San Francisco, New Orleans and others built in partnership with the U.S. DOE Better Communities Alliance.

Visit the AEI Energy Maps page

AEI Featured on Energy Matters 2U Podcast

AEI was recently featured along with Leidos on an Energy Matters 2U Podcast. During the 20 minute conversation, Carl Popolo of AEI and Ron Gillooly, Leidos' Industrial Energy Program Director, discussed how a building's energy data profile combines with a physical audit to target efficiency measures that have specific and verifiable results.

Listen to the Podcast

AEI To Provide Energy Maps to U.S. DOE Better Communities Alliance

AEI is pleased to have been selected as an Affiliate to the U.S. Department of Energy Better Communities® Alliance. AEI is committed to provide its Energy Map solutions to selected partners from a list of 40 noteworthy cities such as Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and San Francisco.

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AEI Selected as MHEC Supplier

June 29, 2017 -- Carlisle, MA -- AEI has been selected as a Massachusetts Higher Education Consortium (MHEC) supplier to provide Facility Maintenance and Energy Assessment Software to MHEC members through June 2020. The letter from MHEC reads: "Your bid response was evaluated and determined to be the most responsible and responsive bid that offered best value to MHEC members".

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Whole-Portfolio Real-Time Main Metering

AEI brings to market a whole-portfolio real-time main meter view of cities, towns and campuses by combining our AEI Soft Start Real-Time technology with our proven Energy Map visualization platform.

For the energy manager who needs to see energy use across the entire building stock in real-time, this affordable solution shadows the utility main meter, requires no BAS integration, feeds upstream applications such as kiosks, and gives the manager real-time insight into demand response opportunities on their own terms. With 1-minute resolution, rolling profiles and SMS and E-Mail alerts, this integrated solution can also help control billing-period peak usage. It's completely incorporated into our Energy Map platform for exploring historical usage, and that means one-stop-shopping for your energy team to study utility trends, track sustainability goals, and to know your real-time position for social awareness and real-time response.

Explore the Demo

The Bigger Apple: City of New York Energy Map

Building on our work last year to deliver an Energy Map of the City of Boston, we figured we should demonstrate a little scalability and bite on something bigger. The result is our City of New York Energy Map that combines data from the PLUTO and LL84 disclosure reporting datasets and shows electricity, natural gas, oil, steam and water consumption for over 13,000 properties with a combined GSF of over 1.8 billion ft2. The data includes GHG emissions, and for most properties we're able to show trends since 2011.

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AEI Commissioning

Are your buildings running efficiently? Let's look at the data and prove it to the managers who pay the utility bills. Efficiency problems? Download the AEI Commissioning Services brochure to see how we can help.