BERKELEY, CA — Scientific Conservation Inc., the Berkeley firm that launched its innovative Sciwatch solution to tackle buildings' energy drift in June, has released its newest product for beta testing: an application that measures and predicts a facility's energy use so accurately that its projections can fall within 1- to 2 percent of actual energy consumption, its creators say.
In its announcement of the product yesterday, SCI included an open invitation to as many as 25 firms to participate in the beta testing program.
A major benefit of Scienergy, executives at Scientific Conservation say, is its ability to help determine to an usually high degree of accuracy whether a building's energy efficiency performance is at optimal levels or flagging.
The issue is of key importance in the green building industry, which has moved from its early stages toward a growth period that is marked by a greater awareness of the environmental impacts of buildings and the need to reduce them. The period is also marked by increasing scrutiny of gaps that emerge between a structure's design for resource efficiency and its actual performance.
According to Scientific Conservation COO and founder John Pitcher, the tools generally used for measuring and projecting energy use -- statistical models and building simulations -- do not provide information with the degree of accuracy that building owners and operators need to pinpoint how much energy their properties use, how much they can save and, in turn, how much of an investment should be made to deliver that savings.
"There has been a tremendous among of frustration" around that issue, Pitcher told GreenBiz.com and GreenerBuildings.com.
That's because the tools typically used for measurement and projection are "lucky to be within plus-or-minus 15 percent" of actual use, he contends.
"The ramification is that so many building owners have been incredibly conservative in investing in energy efficiency and conservation projects," Pitcher said.
In contrast, through its advanced technology Scienergy can correlate predicted energy baselines within 1- to 2 percent of actual usage, Pitcher and his company say. "As a result, we're providing an energy savings methodology that is extremely well positioned to provide accurate measurements of carbon reduction and by extension, cap and trade of carbon credits," the COO said in the company's announcement of Scienergy.
So, just how well positioned is the firm and its new product?
The company’s invitation to firms to participate in the beta program, will give businesses a chance to judge for themselves.
Chris Pieper, SCI's vice president for business development, urged interested companies to apply soon. The first 25 firms to apply by November 13 will be included in the program. Information on how to sign up is available here.
The company says it has tested the product in a range of buildings from schools to hospitals and offices to industrial facilities. It is looking to expand its test pool and obtain more feedbank on product performance. In the majority of test cases so far, the accuracy of Scienergy's projections for monthly energy use was 99 percent, the firm said.
Scienergy uses fuzzy logic and artificial intelligence neural network technologies to detect relationships between operations variables, which are complex as well as numerous, and patterns in a building's energy use.
The process is not linear and neither are usage patterns, Pitcher pointed out, adding that the tools traditionally used for measurements and projections take a linear approach. To further set it apart, Scienergy can handle any number of variables and scale to handle thousands of buildings, he said. It is also flexible and can be used to determine greenhouse gas as well as energy savings baselines.
The Scienergy application can be used as a standalone as well as with the Sciwatch Automated Continuous Commissioning platform. Both are software-as-a-service solutions and "the two together (used) are just a tremendous amount of value" for building owners and operators, Pieper said.
The company's advances in the field of Automated Continuous Commissioning were recognized in August, when the firm was named a recipient of the Frost & Sullivan 2009 Enabling Technology of the Year Award. SCI clients have included Neiman Marcus, NASA, Hardees, Harley Davidson and Santa Clara County in California.
Photo of Santa Clara County Adminstration Building
Image CC licensed by Flickr user roarofthefour.