Buildings rarely perform as initially intended, resulting in energy use that is higher than anticipated. To resolve this inherent problem, retro-commissioning, performance contracting, and facility IoT analytics have all emerged to capture market share. In practice, energy efficiency in buildings is achieved through the balanced combination of design concepts, applied technologies, and operational strategies. These work together to reduce the consumption of energy.
Different client types find the focus on energy-efficient retrofits attractive for a variety of reasons. Perhaps most common is to simply reduce operating costs. An increasing number of building owners and managers are concerned with the overall environmental impact of their buildings, the health of building occupants, and the market value that an environmentally-conscious facility commands.
The efforts to better quantify, benchmark and meter building utility usage are picking up speed. Across the country, initiatives are advancing in a variety ways to collect information on building utility consumption at multiple levels. That’s where Energy Engineers come into play. They are dealing with energy efficiency, demand/supply services, facility management, plant engineering, retro-commissioning, environmental compliance, and alternative energy technologies.
For over thirty years, Computrols has been studying buildings. Our Energy Analysis team is comprised of experts in the field of building efficiency and is dedicated to healthy building best practices.
An Energy Engineer’s role is to provide comprehensive energy analysis services aimed at reducing operating costs and promoting sustainable design initiatives. Some of the techniques and services include energy audits, DDC/BAS design, engineering calculations (ranging from simple spreadsheet analysis to full building simulation modeling), life-cycle cost analysis, and measurement and verification.
Computrols team leverages industry standards and our 30+ years of experience for all of our energy analysis services to bring buildings to their peak efficiency. By utilizing temporary and permanently installed meters, we can make assessments and predictions on the components of a building’s systems and even set up virtual metering for ongoing analysis. As a standalone service, this process is likely to generate significant returns for building owners and managers. At a bare minimum, this will provide significant insight to identify actual energy consumption on equipment that is being metered.
As for current Computrols customers, they stand to benefit even more from this kind of service because of the histories that have been accumulated from the systems installation. Based on this historical and real-time data, in addition to predictive weather data, Computrols Building Automation Software will have the ability to find where energy is being wasted and make recommendations for how the system can be better optimized.
The Computrols Research and Development team is continually utilizing advances in artificial intelligence. Over the course of the last 30 years, we have collected histories from thousands of databases. This evolving technology enables us to identify trends in these histories from which we are able to implement intelligent algorithms into our software platforms.
Design-based, weather-adjusted, and program-specific energy software such as eQUEST, Portfolio Manager, and Payback calculators can be used during the programming phase to establish energy targets and afterward, during the schematic design phase, to study energy options.
Ideally, energy analysis solutions will pay for themselves in operating cost savings. In offices, for example, it is economically realistic to reduce energy costs from 30 to 50 percent below national averages if an optimal mix of energy-efficient strategies is applied. Part of energy analysis services can be to help clients determine appropriate investment levels.
Today, armed with more knowledge and a better technology platform, Energy Engineers make energy analysis advantageous for building owners, managers, and occupants. In the world where energy conservation is a high priority, it is important to use all available tools to succeed.
If you are interested in learning more about Computrols Energy Analysis services, please contact us at 504-529-1413.
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