Unique People Services’ (UPS) 2050 Grand Concourse, a New York State Buildings of Excellence award-winning development, topped off earlier this year.
UPS will use the Buildings of Excellence award to implement Bright Power’s MoBIUSⓇ. This will allow UPS to operate the building at the highest level and, once occupied, adjust settings and controls based on how the residents use the spaces while maintaining the building’s low carbon emissions levels.
To share a bit more about how MoBIUS will keep 2050 Grand Concourse a high performing, energy efficient building once occupied, we spoke to Flemin Reji, a Project Manager on Bright Power’s MoBIUS team.
What exactly is MoBIUS?
MoBIUS is Bright Power’s real-time energy management and continuous commissioning service that embeds a Bright Power energy engineer into a property’s maintenance and operations team. We provide on-site and remote technical support, continually monitoring equipment and analyzing performance to develop operations improvement plans and long-term sustainability strategies and capital planning.
For high performance building systems that might be new to building staff, we provide training and custom operations manuals. This is very helpful in new developments where there is a handoff from the construction to operations teams. We bridge that gap, providing clear communication and guidance. In regular times, this was a feature of the service our clients loved, but now that ownership might be remote and unable to interact with site staff easily and safely, this has become a game-changer.
Tell us how you have been involved in the 2050 Grand Concourse project?
I have had the pleasure of working with Unique People Services and TMBA, their building management system (BMS) installer, to design and set up MoBIUS at 2050 Grand Concourse. Specifically, I have reviewed building drawings and equipment systems to decide what we would want to monitor based on UPS’s goals and sustainability strategy.
What will MoBIUS be monitoring at 2050 Grand Concourse?
2050 Grand Concourse will have 14 electric heat pumps that will provide heating and cooling. Those heat pumps are connected to 159 indoor units that will serve the residential apartments, community offices, building support offices, and common area spaces. MoBIUS will be able to tell what units are on. This is very important as we develop schedules and work with the maintenance team during our MoBIUS engagement to help with preventative maintenance. If a unit is on when indoor air temperature setpoints are met, or vice versa, we get an alert and can investigate. Understanding and adjusting schedules based on use has provided savings in other MoBIUS clients.
We are also setting up sensors to monitor operational parameters of domestic hot water recirculation pumps, triplex water booster pumps, exhaust fans, and the Energy Recovery Unit (ERU) serving residential corridors to understand how the equipment is actually impacting the spaces. Providing comfortable, safe—and sustainable—spaces for 2050 Grand Concourse residents is our top priority. With these sensors, we can work with site staff to make adjustments based on the monitoring data before a resident even notices a dip in temperature or pressure.
Where does TMBA and the building control system come in?
TMBA is the building management system (BMS) installer. They are working closely with the MoBIUS design team, as our strategy for maximizing remote data points is to integrate with a BMS that TMBA is designing. While not every MoBIUS project requires a BMS, UPS has decided the ability to monitor and control the central plant equipment with MoBIUS support will increase their ability to reach their operational goals overtime.
Our MoBIUS hardware strategy focuses on integrating with various new or existing equipment controls and devices to allow for one central data source that contains a building’s complete operational information from utility meters, to pump speed, indoor temperatures, and heating plant status.