How Energy Analytics Help Drive Informed Decisions
Many key decision-makers use utility meters and bills to monitor the health of their buildings and equipment. This technique is ineffective because these are lagging indicators and negative trends aren’t noticed until major issues develop, leaving them with an expensive repair or replacement project. But did you know that your building automation system offers real-time data to help business owners make informed decisions? Learn more about these advanced analytics and the best ways to collect them to reduce energy consumption and costs.
What Are Building Energy Analytics?
Energy analytics uses software to gather utility data and allows maintenance teams to analyze, supervise, and enhance their building automation systems. Implementing a data-driven strategy provides key insights into how HVAC equipment performs and which elements are experiencing issues.
Why Are Energy Consumption Analytics Important?
Monitoring a building automation system is challenging for many businesses because their maintenance teams are short-staffed and often lack training. Energy analytics software provides valuable assistance to technicians by uncovering specific and actionable insights. Many building energy analytics providers offer dashboards enabling employees to monitor trends easily and determine where issues are developing. The high-level knowledge provided by building energy analytics software helps business owners make educated decisions to improve the health of their commercial buildings.
When Should You Consider Implementing Energy Analytics Software?
Companies using only their monthly energy bills to drive decision making risk missing key indicators of developing problems. Here are some signs that suggest it’s time to implement energy analytics into your building system program:
- Expanding Campus Footprint: Many clients see their campus of buildings grow annually, yet their facility staff size is static or even declining. This puts even more pressure on an already difficult situation. Energy & Building Analytics provide leverage to offset a growing workload and allow the facility staff to work smarter.
- Reduced efficiency: Installing energy analytics is a good idea if you’ve noticed equipment running for longer periods or recently had to repair or replace a system.
- Increased costs: Rising energy bills can indicate a problem, but they won’t tell you where it exists. Energy analytics helps a maintenance team determine an issue’s exact location.
- Staff shortages: Many industries are experiencing a talent gap in their maintenance teams. Energy analytics provides critical data that allows them to work smarter and more efficiently.
What Industries Benefit from Energy Analytics Software?
While energy analytics provides cost and energy-saving benefits for every business, this strategy is most beneficial for the following industries:
Healthcare
Hospitals and other healthcare facilities must maintain strict interior temperatures to maintain patient comfort and meet humidity and pressurization level regulations. This means that HVAC systems and other elements are constantly in use. Energy analytics allow maintenance teams to proactively identify and address minor issues before those problems develop into major breakdowns. This provides long-term cost savings and enhances performance.
Municipalities
Reducing taxpayer burden is a top priority for any local municipality, and energy bills are an overlooked cost-savings opportunity. Energy analytics software allows facilities teams to harness essential output data and make adjustments where necessary. This allows local governments to reduce public spending without sacrificing occupant comfort.
K-12 Schools
School district managers face the challenging task of keeping energy costs low while making sure teachers and students have comfortable conditions for an enhanced learning experience. Developing an energy analytics platform helps schools run advanced analytics and keep their independent service contractors accountable.
Universities
Increasing campus sizes and aging buildings mean universities consume significant amounts of energy. Implementing energy analytics in building automation systems allows college administrators to make educated decisions that reduce costs and increase equipment efficiency.
Are you looking to create a healthier building? BuildingLogiX’s CBS offers advanced energy analytics that allows your maintenance teams to react quickly to minor issues. Contact us today to begin to start leveraging your data.
Energy Analytics Software Offered by BuildingLogiX
Having access to an energy analytics platform is a valuable asset, but partnering with a provider that can help you analyze and interpret the data is essential for maximizing its potential. BuildingLogiX offers Connected Building Services (CBS) that combine innovative analytics software with our team’s expertise to extract information that enables educated decisions.
CBS harnesses technology and engineered processes to provide key insights on performance and translates the information on the BuildingLogiX Data eXchange (BDX). Some of the features include in BDX include:
Fault Detection and Diagnostics
A commercial building has multiple building automation systems, and uncovering problems is difficult if you don’t know where to look. CBS offers enhanced Fault Detection and Diagnostics (FDD) capabilities that reveal improvement opportunities by detecting, isolating, identifying, and evaluating problems when they occur. FDD reduces long-term costs and enhances the useful life of equipment by alerting your maintenance team to minor concerns before developing into major breakdowns.
Data Visualization
Manually reading the data produced by building automation systems is a time consuming task and can be challenging for people who lack an understanding of energy data analytics. CBS is a user-friendly platform that uses visual representations to communicate information to the right people at the right time. With easy-to-read graphs and customizable options, CBS improves your team’s productivity and lets your maintenance team monitor multiple systems simultaneously.
Chiller Plant Optimization
Chiller plants are often the largest energy consumers for a commercial building. CBS provides a chiller plant analysis tool that regularly monitors equipment to identify difficult-to-spot problems, including:
- Short cycling
- Poor water flow
- Tube fouling
- Chiller coordination
Our innovative tool allows maintenance teams to compare chillers to pinpoint poor-performing equipment and address operational issues.
Strategic Energy Management
Setting goals and monitoring progress is an essential part of reducing energy usage. BuildingLogiX offers strategic energy management programs that enable businesses to create setpoints to ensure buildings are as energy efficient as possible.
Optimize Your Building Systems With Energy Analytics From BuildingLogiX
BuildingLogiX is a technology-driven service provider that’s helped facilities across multiple industries increase their energy efficiency since 2006. We understand that large enterprises treat buildings as assets and work hard daily to maximize value. Our team works with clients to seamlessly implement CBS throughout their campus and deliver regular check-ins to offer ongoing improvement suggestions. We’ve deployed CBS in more than 500 million sq. ft. and regularly see more than 10% utility cost reductions in the first year. Contact BuildingLogiX today to learn more about our innovative BMS solutions.