Smart building technologies are raising the bar for what's possible in energy savings and efficiency improvements for managing commercial buildings.
Look no further than the newly constructed San Francisco Public Utility Commission (SFPUC) headquarters. The 13-floor, $190-million design includes state-of-the-art smart building technologies using 55 percent less energy and consumes 32 percent less electrical demand than the ASHRAE baseline standard.
Not to be outdone, the U.S. General Services Administration recently awarded a contract to IBM to install and develop building-monitoring systems in 50 to 100 of the fed’s highest-energy-consuming buildings. Those systems -- expected to improve building energy efficiencies and save up to $15 million in taxpayer dollars annually -- would connect to a central facility using a cloud-based platform.
While smart building systems can indeed provide significant efficiency gains, their sophistication can prove to be challenging to a building’s operating or maintenance staff, said Eric Bloom, a senior analyst with Pike Research. As companies increasingly adopt next-generation building technologies for commercial energy management, the market to manage those building solutions will soon overtake investment in the technologies themselves.
As such, according to a new study by Pike Research, the need for managing services in automated building management systems is on pace to almost quadruple by the end of the decade, growing from $291 million this year to $1.1 billion by 2020.
The report calculates current spending on all smart building services, including data acquisition and analytics, as well as building maintenance contracts.
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I have to agree somewhat with
I have to agree somewhat with Anon. The main developments in these Building Energy Management Systems won't come from improving their features and functionality. They can already be complicated enough for energy champions or maintenance teams to deal with. I can't help but feel that the real innovation will come from the software designers that develop interfaces so intuitive and enjoyable to use that those responsible have a real desire to monitor and optimise building operation. Especially in buildings such as schools and care-homes where the incentive to improve energy consumption may be less obvious.
As installation engineers we like the BEMS we work with to be designed for the end user, not for some mythical BMS expert that will supposedly be managing the system 24hrs a day.
Derek, Good article about
Derek,
Good article about smart building technology. I appreciate your caveat that not all building managers have the technical sophistication to manage and fully adapt to these technologies. Many school districts, municipalities and non-profit organizations lack the in-house technical capacity necessary to take full advantage of the technologies (often proprietary with mandated service agreements) being sold to them. In these circumstances, taxpayers often lose. Sometimes they lose big. And they don't even know it.
It's interesting to note the
It's interesting to note the progress in smart buildings. I wonder how much longer till the goal will smart buildings that provide healthy indoor environments as a priority. Here, the focus will include maximizing the productivity of the people (at around $300/SF) as well as minimizing energy costs (at around $3/SF) I ask because this is currently my focus and I could offer useful insights in achieving and maintaining healthy and smart buildings to anyone who's interested.