To say that we are in unprecedented times is an understatement. As you are reading this, you are probably sitting at home rather than in your office or on public transportation. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a dramatic shift in how and where people are consuming energy as students and faculty are working and learning from home, rather than in school environments or centralized offices.
This shift has made it increasingly difficult for building owners and operators to understand and manage their buildings’ energy consumption.
So what can you as a building owner or operator do?
Turn to Real-time Energy Management Services
Bright Power analyzed the total energy consumption of two higher education clients engaged with Bright Power’s MoBIUS® (Management of Building Information, Utilities, & Systems) service to see how real-time energy management has impacted their buildings in a time of crisis. Both of these clients followed New York’s stay-at-home order; thus their students left their respective campuses in March.*
With real-time data from the MoBIUS monitoring systems, our dedicated energy engineers identified opportunities to re-program equipment operating schedules, reducing their run-hours on the now-empty campuses. Our engineers worked with site staff to ensure that those changes were made, and made them remotely themselves wherever possible. The result, as shown in the graph, was a substantial decrease in energy usage in April, down to the levels that the campuses would typically experience in the summertime. With all the economic uncertainties at this time, these higher education institutions have one less thing to worry about knowing that their energy bills are minimized and their building systems are under control.
Now is the time to assess how your spaces are used, and what the real cooling needs will be as we enter the hot summer months. With the right tweaks, you could turn an energy hog into an energy-sipping, sustainably-operated building this summer. Plus, this can get you on the path to meeting the forthcoming carbon emissions limits under New York City’s Local Law 97 (carbon emissions limits).
With everything else you have going on, the best way to stay on top of your buildings’ energy consumption is to work with a partner who focuses on energy, ideally with a real-time energy management service like MoBIUS. This way you can stay focused on getting your buildings back up and running in this brave new world, whether that is creating modified learning environments, socially-distanced office spaces or just helping your staff and tenants through this crisis.
Interested to learn more? Contact us today.
Curious to see more analysis of how MoBIUS buildings compare to peers? Stay tuned for a report that we are publishing this summer!
*We reviewed energy source data from January through April 2020 and compared it to 2019 energy consumption data. All data was weather normalized to allow for a more accurate comparison. The owner paid for all the heat and hot water for the building.